


Ricochet

by Strix4



Category: Naruto
Genre: And Then Some Added In For...Reasons, Canon-Typical Tragedy, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 Bonding (Naruto), Dai-nana-han | Team 7 Have Issues (Naruto), Dai-nana-han | Team 7 as Family (Naruto), Everybody Is Sad And Also A Smartass, Gen, I Just Needed A Space to Cry About Team 7 OK, Team 7 And Their Roulette Wheel of Traumas, The Plot Is Kind Of...I'm Just Waving My Hands
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25833427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strix4/pseuds/Strix4
Summary: *Completed, Cross-posting from FF*Sometimes, it's easy to see the familiar in the faces around you. Sometimes, it sucks to figure out why.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	1. Strange Places

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so. I'm (slowly) cross-posting this story from FF.net at multiple reader requests. This is weirdly terrifying for me, for reasons I'm refusing to, like, unpack in any emotionally healthy way.  
> Please note, above anything else: I started this story EIGHT YEARS AGO, when I was smaller in size and bigger in idiocy. Part of the cross-posting experience has been combing through the chapters to make sure nothing unintentionally Not Cool came through when I was Much Stupider, but if you see something that's very much ??!! let me know. Please! I want to learn and grow!  
> Trigger Warnings for this chapter: None that I can think of after reviewing it, but if there's anything, PLEASE let me know.

_Naruto_

He woke to the sound of his mother's voice, bellowing its way up the stairs and through his tightly shut door.

"Rise and shine, baby boy! Roll that ass out of bed. I want to take pictures of it before the upperclassmen decorate it with footprints!"

"You've always been my favorite parent!" Naruto shouted back, and flapped his hands until the thick quilt slid off of his face.

As he fumbled around for his school outfit (and rapped into the dresser while doing so, _ouch, fuck_ ) he heard his dad contribute something that sounded a little like, "Weeping on the inside".

"Mornings suck forever," he announced as he barreled his way down the stairs. "That dresser hates my guts. It wants to kill my insides."

At the table, blonde hair barely visible behind the morning paper, Minato offered a mild, "Is it sentient? I'm tripping your mother and leaving the house."

"Love you forever, sweets," Kushina sang out from her spot at the kitchen sink, where she was rinsing coffee cups with her long red hair pulled into a tight tail. "Forever and _always_. Aw," she added, upon seeing her son enter the kitchen. "Look at my baby. All grown up and getting strangled by his necktie."

Naruto glanced down at the messy knot around his throat and puffed his cheeks out in annoyance.

"Why does it hate me?" he asked piteously of the room. "Why does it hate me and want me to suffer?"

He flopped dramatically into his chair, in order to properly emphasize his pain.

"The ballad of manhood," Minato said. "Welcome to its ranks, Son. You can have a cigar after school."

"That's so sweet," Kushina said, as she slid a stack of pancakes across the table. "Just really adorable, the way you're trying to off my kid with cancer sticks. I'm falling for you all over again. Hold me."

"We've discussed this. Sexy times make the child uncomfortable. Therefore we wait to have them until he is out of the house."

"Wow. Remember when you used to be all bendy and fun? Remember that? Now you're just this swirling black hole of boredom that I happen to share offspring with."

"I love it when you talk dirty to me."

"Not enough therapy in the world," Naruto lamented to his forkful of pancake, which dripped syrup in its sympathy.

Kushina laughed, and popped her fist against her son's shoulder blade.

Later, after pancakes had been eaten and the table cleared, Minato and Kushina watched their son search for his backpack and slip into his shoes.

"He looks like you," Kushina sighed, as she snapped her pictures. Naruto zipping his bag shut. Naruto straightening his tie. Naruto batting at his knotted shoelaces like a pissed off kitten-seriously, we're sending this kid off to higher education? "Little Minato clone. But he talks like me. God, you're so lucky."

"Sometimes your words make me sad inside," Minato informed her fondly, and kissed her hair.

"Ready!" Naruto announced, bouncing to his feet, backpack tucked rakishly across one shoulder.

Kushina snapped another picture.

"Now, remember Naruto," Minato said seriously. "It's high school. Prison rules apply. Be sure to assert your dominance right away."

"Shank someone in the schoolyard," Kushina added earnestly. "Only, not really, because I hear they're all about learning and less about violence these days. Use a book, maybe? Shank them with knowledge?"

"You guys are _horrible people_ ," Naruto laughed, and stepped forward to receive his family hug.

For a moment, everything was warm arms and familiar smells and the silent sound of _be safe, have fun, we're proud of you_. And then, Naruto was pushing back, secure in the knowledge that there'd be another group hug waiting for him upon his return, and grinned his way out into the warm sunlight.

He wasn't nervous. Not really, and not just because his Mom was a fearsome bitch-warrior who would go after anyone who tried to screw with his special day (this was fact, Naruto had seen her talk an obnoxious parent pretty much into the fetal position at the arcade on his twelfth birthday, and then cut cake all serene-like while her husband laughed himself sick in the background). He liked people, and people seemed to like him, so. Not nervous. A little bouncy, maybe. Sitting still for eight periods was going to be all sorts of suck.

And uniforms. Really. That was also kind of balls. The pants were all itchy, and they sat way too high up on his ass for his comfort level.

But, all necessary evils according to the parents. Only four years, and then he could choose his own adventure. Because his mom and dad were awesome, and wouldn't push college at him unless he wanted it to be pushed. They drew the line at more illegal money-making pursuits (well, his dad drew the line…his mom kind of shrugged and went 'blah' with her hands), but other than that, Naruto's after-high-school life was up to him. So, he'd suck it up for a few years, and then maybe start making ramen at the shop down the street. Because ramen made all things good in the world and Naruto could get behind that kind of charity work.

Naruto wandered the four blocks to school, floating on happy noodle dreams. He saw some familiar faces once he reached the sun-baked brick building, but not many, because his dad had insisted upon sending Naruto to his and Kushina's old alma mater, even though it was outside of their district.

They'd gotten a letter, shortly after Naruto had been enrolled, from the school principal. It was a reminder that school policies were, indeed, to be followed, no matter what 'that terrifying redheaded girl and her enabling, obviously brainwashed accomplice' seemed to otherwise believe. He'd attached a list of crimes committed by Naruto's parents during their academic years, to support his claims. Naruto had caught his mother sitting at the kitchen table, laughing until tears rolled down her cheeks, the list crumpled in her fist. The next day, he'd found it taped to the refrigerator door and covered in little heart stickers.

So, no. Not a lot of familiar faces as he climbed the steps to the school's entrance. But he saw plenty of teachers, the older ones who looked like they'd been here a while, make 'oh shit' faces as he strolled past. Any other kid might have slumped his shoulders in embarrassment, or tossed out reassuring smiles to try and silently inform the faculty that _no really, my parents don't define me, I promise I won't light the banisters on fire_.

Except that Naruto's parents were made of awesome, and he really kind of wanted everyone to know that they'd raised him right. So his toothy grins instead implied _fuck yes my parents define me, fire is so my favorite thing, your banisters will be funeral pyres_.

Naruto's first hour class was on the second level, tucked into the building's back corner (blah stairs). But the room had some really great windows, and Naruto's first reaction upon entering the room was maybe to flop around in the sunshine until class actually started. The other kids were a lot more interesting than a potential nap, however, so instead he slipped on his most winning smile and tried to decide if drop-kicking the door shut would accomplish the optimal first impression.

The room was almost full (everyone showed up early to make sure they weren't late to their first day of high school, so precious Naruto wanted to purr), and his grin got some tentative responses. A few others went red in the face and tried to stare holes through the surface of their desks ( _We will be friends_ , Naruto promised them silently. _You will love me, and we will light fires together_ ). And one girl who stared back impassively, tapping short fingernails against her desk.

Naruto was across the room in a hot second, throwing himself in the desk next to hers, because _fuck yes_ he was going to date the shit out of her.

"So. We need to discuss you bearing my children. Like, what kind you want and how many we should shoot for."

The girl blinked unimpressed green eyes in his direction.

"Oh, wow," she said. "That's a thing, then. That people say. Really."

Naruto popped his elbows on the desk and settled his chin in his hands. Batted his eyes for all he was worth, because gender roles were stupid, and she could emotionally dominate him all she wanted.

"How do you feel about brood-sized? I'm comfortable with brood-sized. We could start a gang. Or a circus."

The girl smiled, and Naruto's heart fluttered. So meant to be. So, so meant to be.

"I will _actually_ punch you in the face," she said sweetly, and wrapped dainty fingers around a strand of short-trimmed, cotton candy hair.

"They'll write songs about our love," Naruto cooed, and squished his own cheeks. "Ballads. We'll probably die horribly together, and children will study us in history class."

She made some sort of noise, a cross between wounded gazelle and bear-poked-with-stick, and Naruto chose to interpret it as positive progress.

He was about to ask her name, so as to inform her how much better it would sound with 'Uzumaki' tagged on at the end, when the door opened, and another student walked in.

He was all pale skin and dark eyes and manfully sculpted hairdo. His tie was perfect, but he'd left the top button undone, because he was really channeling those teenage dreamboat magazines Naruto sometimes saw in the supermarket. He eyeballed the room and managed to convey the inferiority of every single occupant using only his eyebrows.

The girls swooned. Naruto's green-eyed goddess tilted her head (perhaps in invitation, but more likely to try and scope out Teen Dream Boy's ass). The other boys shrank in their seats.

So, obviously, Naruto was going to have to kick him in the teeth. Like, this had to happen. And soon, before he stole Naruto's woman away with his dark eyes and inevitable angsty back-story.

"Hmph," the boy said, just to make sure that his status as class asshole was locked in place, and ignored Naruto's dagger-glare in order to settle into a seat by the door.

Naruto really, really hated being ignored.

His eyes started to squint as he calculated the number of desks he'd have to hurdle (only four…he could totally do this shit) in order to reach angst-boy's seat. And then hit him with it. But the bell rang before his master plan could be executed, and the sound startled him back into his chair.

"I don't actually want to sit by you, and all of your crazy," his dream woman informed him cheerfully. "I'm afraid it may be infectious. Feel free to move away before I beat your face in."

"You're sexy when you're murderous."

Her hands balled into fists on the desk. He beamed. Their kids were going to be _such winners_.

Five minutes past, filled with Naruto's continued romantic overtures and counted by the steady ticks in dream girl's temple. But no teacher arrived, and the students began to squirm in their seats.

"Five more minutes," some of them whispered. "Five more minutes and then we can leave. Um. Just go. I think?"

Naruto heard neck-slut mutter "Idiots" from his desk and felt the hair on the back of his neck bristle. He was about to suggest a manly bout of arm-wrestling (with an added kick to the face, courtesy of Uzumaki Providers) when the door opened, and a man walked in, dressed in a shaggy suit and wearing a grey face mask.

What.

No, seriously.

What?

"Why is he wearing that?" dream girl asked, obviously forgetting her vow to hate Naruto for all eternity in the wake of her newfound confusion.

"I want to rip it off," Naruto whispered, fingers curling desperately on the desk. "I _have to rip it off_. And possibly eat it."

Dream Girl remembered her vow very abruptly, and scooted her desk away.

The teacher, apparently oblivious to the hissing whispers of his class, dropped a single orange book on his desk (Naruto narrowed his eyes at it, because it looked an awful lot like the smut novels his mom waved around sometimes when she wanted her husband to make those funny choking noises). He picked up a sheet of paper, and made happy crescent eyes at the gaping students.

"Good morning, class!" he greeted. "My name is Professor Kakashi Hatake. Sorry I was late. My alarm clock got eaten by rabid hyenas. Tragic."

No one moved. No one moved, because that was obviously such beautiful bullshit, and what the fuck was the protocol for calling bullshit on a teacher anyway?

"We won't do much in this class. I know it's only Homeroom, but. I don't really enjoy academics. I actually don't care about any of you, either," the teacher continued cheerfully. "In fact, I hate most of you already. But the school requires that I take roll call. So. Shall we?"

By this point, very few people were breathing, either. The first girl who got called on by Kakashi-sensei looked like she was going to puke all over her desk. But Naruto couldn't be bothered. He'd become fascinated by Kakashi-sensei's form. Guy was long, and scraggly. All arms and legs, with a seriously amazing tower of grey hair. Naruto kind of wanted to poke him to see if he'd fall over, but was simultaneously terrified to do so, for fear that his new Sensei would break in half.

About halfway through roll call, dream girl got a name. Sakura Haruno. Huh.

Uzumaki totally sounded better.

I-listen-to-sad-music-but-don't-admit-it boy got a name too. Sasuke. Sasuke Uchiha.

"I bet you write poetry in your spare time," Naruto hissed out between his teeth as several girls seized lovingly in their seats. "Poetry and _song lyrics_."

"Naruto Uzumaki," Kakashi-sensei called out, and Naruto tore his attention away.

"Sensei, are they feeding you?" he blurted, honestly concerned. "And what's with the mask? Is there some horrible disease eating your face? Should we be running?"

"That's charming," Kakashi-sensei replied, his happy eye curves curling even further upward. 

"I can call someone," Naruto continued solemnly. "I have all of the numbers. My mom gave them to me, because she said if I ever go radioactive, she doesn't want to deal with that shit."

Naruto heard the faint thwack of Sakura's face hitting the surface of her desk. Around him, kids either laughed nervously, because they thought he was kidding, or shifted helplessly in their seats, because maybe they'd heard about his mom and knew that he totally wasn't.

"Adorable," Kakashi-sensei said, and Naruto squawked a little, because that was sarcasm in his voice. That shit was easy to recognize when you'd lived with it since birth. "So, you should all read, or something. Do educational stuff."

He waved his hands encouragingly, and then dropped down to his desk chair and buried his face behind his orange novel. And there was even more nervous shifting, because they all had the appropriate textbooks (well, most of them, Naruto was pretty sure; although, he might have thrown his math book out the window, because one look inside made his soul die a little) but no one had thought to bring anything actually fun to do.

Well, except Sakura, apparently. After sparing their teacher a brief, scandalized glare, she pulled a thick novel out of her bag and flipped it open. And Sasuke-Angstchiha had folded his fingers together and appeared to be gearing up the annual survey and review of gently weeping guitar memories.

So, Naruto whipped out his phone, because meh. Kakashi-sensei was ignoring them anyway.

 _Just offered marriage to your future daughter-in-law_ , Naruto typed out to his parents. _My teacher is wearing a mask and reading porn. Also, I'm about to beat this kid's teeth in for wearing SUCH. BITCHFACE._

His dad sent back, _You can't hit someone for bitchface. YOU have a bitchface._

His mom replied with, _What kind of porn?_

Naruto grinned and sent them both a row of hearts.

After a few minutes of staring blankly at the ceiling, Naruto gave up on the entire institution of being still and leaned back over into Sakura's space, ignoring the look she sent him that said, 'Am reading. Will hit'.

"So, you're reading," he offered in a loud whisper. "Which means our babies will be smart _and_ sexy. Thoughts?"

"Filter," Sakura responded. "Between mouth and brain. You have none."

From across the room, a barely audible snicker hit the air. Naruto whipped his head around hard enough to get whiplash, and narrowed his eyes.

Yep. That was definitely a smirk on Sasuke Uchiha's face.

"Got something to share, Bastard?" Naruto asked, not even bothering to lower his voice this time.

"Not particularly," the boy responded, and he sounded like he could care less about Naruto's entire existence. But that damn smirk was still curling his lips, waving itself like a red flag in front of Naruto's eyes.

"Really?" he countered. "Are you sure? Because your _bird's ass_ hairdo seems like it has so many things to say. Like, how much it hates you for forcing it into that position every day. And how eventually it will rebel and swallow your face."

A few of the boys started snickering. The girls looked scandalized. Sakura reached over and pinched him.

"Stop being such a jerk," she hissed.

"Moron," Sasuke added for good measure.

Naruto planted his hands on the desk, ready to get up and over, but Kakashi-sensei chose that exact moment to actually care.

"Now, now children," he said mildly, still buried behind his book. "Play nice."

"But Sensei," Naruto whined.

"Reading," Kakashi sang out. "Reading and therefore _not listening_!"

Naruto scowled, and then flopped down on his desk for a manly pout.

By the time the bell rang, Naruto was already bored out of his skull and contemplating the merits of nap time in his next class. He yawned as he got to his feet, intent on walking Sakura to her next class (although he was fairly certain the safety of his manly bits wouldn't be assured once there was no longer a teacher in immediate view), only to notice that she had already skated by him, and was chatting quietly with Sasuke-Bastard by the door.

Naruto made a face. She looked so… _soft_ under his attention. Sweet and girly and _wrong_. Claws retracted. Naruto liked her better flushed and angry and ready to kick some ass if she had to. She should never look so breakable.

So Naruto bounced, past a group of girls silently giving Sakura the evil eye for getting to Sasuke first, and straight up to Sakura's side.

"Sakura!" he sang out. "Want me to walk you to class?"

The look she gave him should have melted his face off like acid, and Naruto beamed. So much better.

But then Sasuke made that sound again. Halfway between a snicker and snort (the vocal equivalent of an eye-roll). And he turned toward the door, obviously intent on leaving Naruto and his stupidity behind. He socked his shoulder into Naruto's as he passed, hard enough to knock Naruto off balance, and for a moment all Naruto could see was Sasuke's retreating back, and then things got just a little bit confusing.

Fury red-washed Naruto's vision and something that tasted weirdly like panic coated the back of his throat. And before he could really process his own reactions, he was pouncing on Sasuke's back, and tackling him to the floor.

They went down hard, the combined weight of two fifteen year old boys cracking Sasuke's elbow and Naruto's knees against the linoleum. Sasuke twisted around, and Naruto was momentarily staggered by the _fury_ on his face (because he'd looked so dead inside before), which gave Sasuke the opportunity to hiss "What the hell is wrong with you?" and drive his fist into Naruto's chest to push him off.

And, okay. Naruto was aware of his own latent abandonment issues (his mom liked to wait until he had friends over and then tell them tales of Naruto's pissed off toddler self, who they'd caught trying to pretzel his way into his Dad's briefcase on work days), and even he knew this was perhaps not the best arena to display them in. But that still didn't stop him from returning Sasuke's punch, because he didn't let that shit go unanswered.

"Naruto! Knock it off!" Sakura shouted, but he wasn't listening, because he was busy taking Sasuke's return punch to the jaw.

Pain snapped bright and yellow behind his eyes, and the baffling fear on the back of his tongue vanished under a rolling wave of _must rip out frou-frou haircut_. As he and Sasuke rolled across the floor, knocking into desks and trying their best to play whack-a-mole with each other's insides, Naruto caught the sound of Sakura and Sensei's voices from above.

"Sensei! Sensei, please. Aren't you going to stop them?"

"Meh. I'm pretty sure they don't pay me for that."

"….Are you reading _porn_?"

Naruto's resulting snicker cost him a bloody lip.

"Fine. Just… _fine_!"

And then slender fingers were grabbing at the back of Naruto's head, and smashing his skull against Sasuke's hard enough to send stars wheeling above his eyes.

He yelped and rolled to the side, flailing indignantly as he scrabbled at his head. Sasuke lay still amongst the ravaged desks, one hand pressed over his face.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU TWO?" Sakura bellowed above them. "Are you FIVE?"

"Owwww!" Naruto whined. "Sakura, my head!"

"Shut. Up. Idiot," Sasuke muttered from underneath his hand.

For a moment, something like confusion crossed Sakura's face. She stared at her hands, then at their heads, and squinched her brown up tight.

Then, the confusion cleared as quickly as it had come, and some of the murder faded from Sakura's eyes, to be replaced with a kind of mortified stillness.

"Oh. Oh! Sasuke! I'm so sorry…I don't know what I was thinking!"

Sasuke spread his fingers a little and fixed her with a dark glare. For a moment, Sakura wilted, and Naruto thought she might cry (and he balled his fist up again in preparation). But then her spine snapped straight and she tossed her head.

"You were the one who let him antagonize you," she reminded him primly, and Naruto let out a rollicking laugh, fist relaxing at his side.

As Naruto climbed unsteadily to his feet ( _everything_ hurt, fuck damn it), trading glares with Sasuke all the while, a hand reached out and patted at Sakura's head. Kakashi-sensei.

"Well done, Sakura," he said cheerfully, and he was _still reading that damn book_. "Boys, as entertaining and manly as that was, I believe a trip to the principal's office is in order."

He finally snapped his novel closed, tucking it into his back pocket, and snagged Naruto and Sasuke's necks in surprisingly strong hands. Naruto yowled and twisted, and mortified color stained Sasuke's pale face.

"My father will-," he managed.

But Kakashi-sensei cut him off with a loud and gleeful, "Want to hear about your adventures, I'm sure!" before frog-marching them out of the room and through the crowd of gaping students gathered by the door.

"Idiots," Naruto heard Sakura mutter as the door shut behind them. "Such idiots."

Kakashi walked them all the way down the principal's office, and eventually Naruto stopped struggling, because cataloguing all of Sasuke's injuries was so much more satisfying (and because even though Sensei let them go once they reached the stairwell, perhaps because Sasuke looked ready to panic himself into oblivion over being touched by another human being, the man was radiating a disappointment under those happy eyes that seemed really deep and sort of familiar).

Naruto pulled out his phone once they'd been seated outside the office, because Kakashi-sensei took off after rapping his knuckles against the glass wall and tossing 'Have fun!' at the principal's secretary.

 _Bitchface eliminated_ , he typed out to his parents. _You should be getting a phone call soon_.

His dad responded with, _It's been less than two hours. Seriously?_

His mom typed back, _I told you to shank them WITH KNOWLEDGE_.

 _Your first day included fire_ , Naruto reminded them.

 _Your argument is invalid_ , his mother messaged back. _I waited until the final bell had rung._

Naruto rolled his eyes, and stuffed his phone back in his pocket. He kicked his feet against the bottom of the chair for a while, and then stopped when his swollen ankle (where Sasuke had kicked him, the jerk) told him to knock it the fuck off. After a while, he popped his chin against his palm and stared a little bit at Sasuke. The other boy was attempting to set the wall on fire with the power of his fury, although his glare looked a little less badass and a little more cuddles due to the black eye starting to swell.

Naruto hummed a little bit as he considered both his buzzy contentment at the sight of Sasuke sitting next to him and his mind informing him that _He looks the same as me under all that skin_.

Well. Probably that was the endorphins talking. That, and the Boy Code written deep into his blood. The way Naruto saw it, they'd attempted to punch each other's faces off. Best friends was obviously where they were headed. Comfortable hatred was the starting point.

Sasuke probably didn't know that yet. He didn't look like he spent a lot of time communing with the Boy Code.

"Hey, Bastard," Naruto said, after sitting a while in silence.

"What, Moron?" Sasuke asked, his voice all nice and empty once again. Naruto already hated that like poison; Sasuke was much more fun when he was spitting flames.

Naruto hummed a little bit more, staring at the ceiling, before responding in a thoughtful voice.

"Do you believe in déjà vu?"


	2. Familiar Faces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know nothing makes sense. I know. I'm sorry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings: Some mild horror imagery, mild anxiety over living up to parental expectations.

_Sasuke_

So, Sasuke liked to plan. He liked steps and stages and knowing outcomes, and the satisfaction that came with reaching an endpoint due to his own careful machinations. He knew his intelligence was well above average for a boy his age, and took great pleasure in cultivating that which caused his father to look on him with quiet pride.

He was careful. He was controlled. He was one step ahead of everyone else, always.

Except now, he was sitting outside the principal's office on his first day of school. Next to a bright blonde moron who kept swinging his feet and smiling like the two of them had traded friendship bracelets instead of swinging fists.

So, okay. Sasuke was willing to admit to some general confusion about how all of this had gone down.

For someone who prided himself on following such clear cut road maps, Sasuke found himself very (secretly, because like hell that idiot got to see anything other than his default 'the world is stupid' face) bewildered by how royally fucked up the line between point A and point B had gotten.

It was just really, really comfortable to blame the idiot for everything. And so Sasuke did, with every fiber of his being.

"I think you bruised my kidneys," the idiot in question said. "Like, there may be blood the next time I piss."

Sasuke cocked an eyebrow. Because the moron sounded _so happy_ about it, and Sasuke didn't actually have a giant, flashing sign that said REALLY. WHAT THE FUCK? to hold up. 

"Also, I think they called our parents," Naruto continued. "Because the principal's secretary just put her head down on the desk, and she might actually be crying, and my mom sort of makes people feel that way inside. So."

"I don't actually want to talk to you," Sasuke said. "You know that, right?"

Naruto gave him a very patient look.

"Of course you do," he said. "Like, you totally proved it just now."

And Sasuke wasn't normally talkative, and especially not with people he hated _so much_ , but he also _had to know_.

"Why," he said, a bit desperately, because he was pretty sure that this was what drowning felt like. " _Why_."

But his quest for understanding (this was how it started, Sasuke _knew that_ , and yet he still couldn't stop himself) was interrupted by the addition of another voice.

"Bitchcakes," a woman said, red hair falling like a flag, grin on her face, staring at them with Naruto's eyes and Sasuke was _so doomed_. "You are grounded _forever_."

"Lies," Naruto fired back. "You're totally proud of me. Pretty sure I'm about to get suspended, and I didn't even need fire to do it."

"That right there," the woman said, eyes narrowed. "What you just said. That was a challenge."

Naruto shrugged. Sasuke ignored them both and focused very hard on becoming one with the wall behind him. Not because he was _afraid_ , but because he kind of needed to laugh, a bit hysterically and for a really long time, and Uchihas just didn't do that sort of thing.

"You're already here," Naruto reminded her. "I mean, the effort would be minimal. Just saying."

For a moment, there was silence, and not because the redheaded woman had joined Sasuke in horrified contemplation. She was _considering it_ , Sasuke realized, and felt something die a little inside his brain.

"No," the woman finally sighed sorrowfully. "Age of majority, or whatever. Pretty sure they could arrest me now."

"Sucks," Naruto agreed, all sympathy.

"And who is this strapping young man, wearing what I assume are the imprints of your knuckles and knees?"

"This is Sasuke!" Naruto said, all smiles, like they were best friends forever and ever, and Sasuke really wanted to know _what he had done_ in another life to deserve _two_ sets of bitch-crazy blue eyes lasered in his direction.

"Aw," Kushina said, taking in Sasuke's dark hair and purple and blue mottled pale skin. "He's so sad on the inside. Like a panda. Naruto, you punched an infant panda."

"No, I didn't!" Naruto said, and he sounded so offended for reasons Sasuke never, ever wanted to explore. "He's not a panda. He hit me back! Sasuke, tell her you're not a panda!"

"Shut up, idiot," Sasuke said. He wasn't going to _deny_ being a panda, not when crazy mom was still staring at him.

"Naruto, leave him alone," Kushina said sternly. "Can't you see that he's all sensitive and shit? He's not Bitchface, he's just crying on the inside."

"He's totally Bitchface," Naruto assured her. "But you're right; he's got a gooey center underneath."

"Like a candy bar," Kushina said, with a head nod made of wisdom.

"Sasuke," Naruto said, blue eyes big and earnest and so fucking ridiculous with their ring of bruises. "Sasuke, it's okay. Weep your manly panda tears. I'm here for you."

And Sasuke put his head in his hands, because it was either start laughing until said panda tears made an appearance, or scream himself into an insanity-fueled fury.

"How'd you get here so fast?" Naruto asked, ignoring Sasuke's imminent breakdown entirely.

"I got in the car right after you sent that text," his mom answered. "Got the phone call from the principal's secretary on the way over. Sweet lady."

"Mom, she's been crying on her desk ever since she talked to you."

"Yeah, well, she's been around since my time. I'm sure she remembers me fondly."

"Excuse me," a new voice said, and Sasuke whipped his head back up, because _this was the worst thing ever_. "Can anyone explain why my son appears to be weeping into his hands?"

"You must be Mommy Panda!" Kushina said, crazy eyes alight.

Sasuke wanted to die.

Naruto, who was squinting at his mother, small and dark with pale skin and fine bones, said with tremendous concentration and reverence, " _That's what you would look like as a girl_."

Sasuke wanted to die _harder_.

"Mom," he said, with an impressive amount of calm.

"Sasuke," she said, taking in his puffy face with a faint line of worry between her brows. "Baby, are you all right?"

"Baby," Naruto mouthed, and collapsed in a silent fit of laughter.

"Your mom calls you Bitchcakes," Sasuke hissed back.

"Wait. Mommy Panda, you have to understand," Kushina said, all seriousness, grabbing earnestly at the other mother's hands. "My son is a little shit. Your son seems, like, at _least_ little-shit adjacent. We should see this as a bonding experience, no?" _  
_

"That's...an interpretation," Sasuke's mother said, and there was a worrying sheen of quiet amusement underneath the concern in her eyes.

"Stop letting your mom infect my mom with her crazy," Sasuke demanded, nudging Naruto's ribs none too gently with his elbow.

The look Naruto gave him was made of pity.

"What, you can't see it?" he asked. "Oh, _Sasuke_."

"So, should we make them hug it out?" Sasuke's mother suggested, because apparently Sasuke's _entire life_ had been a lie up until this point, and his mom actually wanted him to suffer.

Sasuke shot her a look brimming with betrayal and _pain._ His mom returned it with a serene smile.

Okay, yeah. He could see it now.

"I'm Kushina," Naruto's mother added, and she still hadn't released Sasuke's mother's hands.

"Mikoto."

Naruto watched them with a bright smile. Sasuke stared at the three of them like maybe there was an open window around that he could utilize.

"I believe the principal's secretary is ready to see us now," Mikoto said. "Although, she appears to be waving us in with a tear-stained handkerchief."

Naruto laughed, loud and long, and Kushina finally released Mikoto's hands so that she could storm the office doors and throw them open.

"Ms. Seto!" Sasuke heard her shout. "Love of my life, apple of my eye! Tell me how much you missed me!"

Sasuke watched his mother follow Kushina with a sweet, tiny smile made of perfectly fake innocence, listened as Naruto laughed warm and solid at his side, and absolutely refused to acknowledge that he was smiling too.

…

So, no suspension.

The principal had wanted it, Sasuke had seen it in the way he'd looked at Naruto with great despair, like the kid was personally responsible for every grey hair and nervous twitch he possessed. But, he'd also seemed just very appropriately terrified of Naruto's mom, and Sasuke's own mother had sat at her side and _agreed_ with everything Kushina demanded via crazy eyes, and so the principal had squeaked out a three day sentence of detention and then promptly kicked them all out of his office.

Sasuke completely sympathized with the nervous breakdown he was pretty sure he heard once the office doors were shut behind them.

After that, the boys were gathered up by their respective mothers, and Sasuke all but sprinted out of the building, spooked, because Naruto looked like he was seriously considering that hugging thing.

"See you tomorrow, Sasuke!" Naruto called, all good cheer, and Mikoto smiled all the way home like she knew a secret, and this was Sasuke's _life_.

He waited in his room once they got home, stomach hot and tight, because he knew his dad would be back eventually. His mother let him sprint up the stairs with a smile and a soft brush to the back of his head, and Sasuke knew that his dad wouldn't be angry, not really, but the thought of disappointing him made Sasuke want to curl up in a ball of unhappiness.

He was paging through his text books, brain on miserable autopilot, when he heard his bedroom door squeak open. He tensed, ready to start spilling apologies, only to sigh when he felt the tug of a tiny hand at his sleeve.

"Misami," he said.

The four year old stood by his desk, staring solemnly out of wide grey eyes.

"Mommy says you can't play with me right now, because you're sad," she announced, and then tilted her head. "Why are you sad?"

Sasuke hauled himself out his chair and scooped his sister up into his arms, because she should never look so upset, and he considered it his personal mission to make sure she never did.

"I'm not sad," he said. "See? Playing with you right now."

He gave her a bounce, but she didn't smile, just continued to stare at him out of those long grey eyes that seemed so familiar to him, had spawned prickles of fierce love and protection and _recognition_ since the second his mom had placed her in his arms. He'd been eleven when she was born, and she'd felt like his reason for everything, and Sasuke hadn't known how much he'd needed one. She'd been tiny, barely above six pounds, wrapped in warm blankets, and she'd opened up those impossible eyes the instant he started holding her, and in that moment he'd never doubted that he had to do better by her, had to protect her from anything and everything, and always let her know how much she mattered.

Sometimes Sasuke wondered just who he was trying so hard to do better than.

"I'm okay, Misami," Sasuke said. "Promise."

She kicked her little feet a bit, eyeing him contemplatively, before putting her head on his shoulder, and her arms around his neck. It was an old move with them, familiar, and Sasuke rocked her a little, grateful for the weight of her against his chest. She was a princess, and a brat most of the time, but she also had her quiet moments, just like this, and Sasuke treasured them.

A throat being cleared interrupted Sasuke's gentle swaying, and his cheeks flushed a furious red. His father was standing in the doorway, looking just as uncomfortable with his son's display of vulnerability as Sasuke did. Not that he was any better; Misami _owned_ the both of them, a fact she proved by opening her eyes and stating, "Daddy, I want some cookies."

Fugaku cleared his throat.

"It's almost dinner time, Misami," he said, which was really obviously not a 'no'. "And I need a minute with your brother."

Misami sighed, and then obliged with a final squeeze to Sasuke's neck, and a look in her father's direction that very clearly communicated, _Yeah, I'm totally going to get those cookies_.

"So," Fugaku said, once Misami had scooted out the door. "Your mother tells me that you've been making friends."

Shame snaked its way up Sasuke's spine, and he felt his shoulders droop.

"I'm sorry," he said, barely audible, because the back of his throat felt thick and swollen.

Fugaku fidgeted, and Sasuke had an acute, clarifying moment of just how awkward this conversation was going to be (although nothing would ever be as bad as the time his dad had tried to give him 'The Talk', and they'd ended up sputtering helplessly at each other for a while, until his mother had come in, given her husband a pitying look, handed him a baby Misami, shooed him out of the room, and proceeded to explain things with great detail and a serene smile until Sasuke had actually wondered if it was possible to die of emotional pain). He and his dad just didn't _do_ outward expressions of emotion. Apparently, it was an Uchiha thing.

Family reunions were legendary levels of awkward.

"Sasuke," his father said slowly, like he knew it was already going to be impossible to get the words out, and so he had to pick them with care. "Sometimes I wonder who's shadow you're trying to live up to."

Sasuke blinked, confused. Fugaku sighed, apparently saddened that Sasuke hadn't gotten the entire thesis of this conversation from that one sentence, and so he would have to speak more.

"You're my son," he said. "My only son. You've done so much already, so many wonderful things. I've been…very proud of you. But you still have these expectations of yourself, Sasuke."

Sasuke flushed even redder, and ducked his head. Praise from his father, communicated in more than small smiles and subtle actions, was shooting-star levels of rare.

"I hope," his father concluded softly. "That I am not the one who has put them there."

"No," Sasuke said.

"All right," Fugaku said, and something like humor warmed his face. "Just…promise me that this won't become a thing. You beating up a different child every day."

Sasuke kind of wanted to melt into his tastefully patterned carpet.

"No, Sir," he said again.

"Good," his father said, and then, because he had apparently reached his quota of outward emotion, added. "Dinner time."

"COOKIES," they heard Misami screech from the first floor.

Fugaku winced with a perfectly straight face, a special talent of his. Sasuke would never, ever own to how much he was laughing on the inside.

"Okay," he said, and headed for the door, and then smiled a little on the outside, because his father brushed his shoulder as he passed.

…

That night, Sasuke dreamed of bodies. Of silent rooms where there should have been sound, and wooden floorboards stained and swollen with blood. He dreamed of blank, lifeless faces, and a little girl walking out of the carnage with quiet grace and a blood spattered party dress.

She took Sasuke's hand, limp with horror and helplessness, in her little one and tugged him down to her level. He heard her satisfied sigh over the screams he hadn't even realized he'd been emitting.

"Brother," she said softly, using those familiar eyes to blink at him, and touched his forehead with her tiny fingers.

Sasuke came to, drenched in sweat and tangled in his sheets. And it was horrible, really horrible, because he didn't feel like he'd woken up.

"Sasuke," his mother said, from where she was sitting on the side of his bed, and she looked blurry, transparent.

"You're not real," he gasped.

He watched her face crease with concern, and he wanted to scream, because he could see through it.

"You're having a nightmare," she said softly. "I heard you. It's okay, Sasuke. I'm here, I promise."

He wanted to ask her if she believed in parallels. If people could be different things based on different circumstances, or if self was something constant. He wanted to ask her where Misami was.

But her fingers were carding through his hair, soft and sweet and _real_ , and Sasuke fell back asleep with a grateful sigh.

….

They didn't talk about it the next day. His mother tried, reminded him that he'd had nightmares ever since he was little, and they were nothing to be ashamed of, but Sasuke just scooped Misami off the floor and held her out face-first in his mother's direction, whispering the word cookies until Misami let out an ear-splitting squeal of demand.

Okay, so not his best or brightest maneuver. But he was a desperate teenager who _really_ didn't want to talk to his mom about his problems.

The other kids at school whispered. They pointed at his bruises, and murmured behind their hands, and Sasuke gave them all his very best _fuck off and die by fire_ eyes until he could escape to his first period classroom.

Only to have a small and silent aneurism upon opening the door and realizing that the only people inside the room were the pink-haired girl from yesterday, the teacher with the mask and the porn addiction, and the blonde idiot who beamed and bounced in his direction right away.

"Sasuke!" he shouted, because he was apparently incapable of speaking at a volume lower than 'deafen thy neighbors'. "You look like shit!"

"Good morning, Sasuke," Sakura added, seated on the windowsill and swinging her feet.

The teacher, Kakashi-sensei, didn't say anything. Just raised an absent hand and stayed buried in his book.

"So, I didn't piss blood last night!" Naruto crowed triumphantly. "I thought for sure I would!"

"That's _so great_ , Naruto," Sakura said gently. "Because _everyone_ here wanted to be updated on your bodily functions. Just really wonderful."

"Pfft. Mom was proud. She'd also like to meet the girl who, and I quote, 'knocked my stupid overly-masculine skull into the floor'. Which is her way of blessing mine and Sakura's future marriage, I think?"

"Sakura's never allowed to meet your mom," Sasuke said in spite of himself, because he might not have wanted to speak to any of them, but he could also imagine the possibilities, and _that shit could not be permitted to occur_.

Sakura gave Sasuke a cotton-candy smile and said, each word precisely enunciated, "Sakura can do whatever Sakura wants."

"But Sasuke," Naruto added. "Sakura has to meet my mom. Someone has to give me away at the wedding."

Sakura had forty-seven visible emotions in the span of five seconds.

"I'll be wearing white," Naruto promised her. "Just for you."

Sasuke scrubbed the mental image from his eyes and considered the fact that technically he wouldn't be breaking his promise to his dad if he kicked the ass of the _same_ student every day.

"How did you sleep, Sasuke?" Kakashi-sensei asked, into the silence, as Naruto beamed at everyone and Sasuke seriously considered tossing him over the nearest desk.

"What?" Sasuke asked. "Um. Fine."

"Why do you ask, Sensei?" Sakura said, with a little laugh. "That's a weird thing to say to your student."

Sasuke narrowed his eyes, because he wasn't stupid, and Sakura wasn't as good at hiding the anger in her voice as she thought she was.

"Just wondering after the well-being of my precious ones," Kakashi-sensei said, pulling his face away from his book long enough to give Sakura a pleasant smile with his eyes.

Sakura smiled again. Sasuke wondered why it looked so brittle.

"You creep me out, Sensei," she said sweetly, and Naruto laughed.

"I'm wounded," Kakashi-sensei said, eyes back on his book, voice a million miles away. "Crushed. Buckling under the weight of my despair because your words and opinions are _so hurtful_ and obviously matter _so much_ to my life-"

"Why do his bruises look so manly?" Naruto interrupted, poking mournfully at his own bruises in his window reflection. "Like, tragic and romantic, and I look like those pissed off cats with swollen cheeks, I looked in the mirror this morning, I _know this to be true_."

"It's the hair," Kakashi-sensei answered. He paused, squinted his eyes at Sasuke for a second. "Yep. The hair."

"But I don't want a duck-butt hairdo!" Naruto wailed.

Sakura threw a book at his head.

Sasuke slid into his seat and called upon every awkward-making, stone wall Uchiha superpower passed to him by his ancestors of angsty bastards. He could do this. He could ignore them.

"By the way," Kakashi-sensei added. "Your detention this week is with me. After school. And Sakura's volunteered to help."

Mother _fucker._

"Bonding!" Naruto shouted, like it was his favorite thing. "I'm bringing snacks. We can share our innermost feelings over cheese crackers."

"You're all idiots," Sasuke muttered, from where his face was now getting to know his desk.

"Ignore him," Naruto advised, in the loudest fucking whisper known to _humanity_. "My dad explained it to me last night. He insults us because he can't admit his affection out loud. His _penis_ is getting in the way. We have to be sensitive to his _manly, penis-inspired turmoil_."

Sasuke laughed.

With his head against the desk, Sasuke laughed, ignoring Sakura's warm smile, Kakashi-sensei's considering look, and the idiot's answering grin.

Sasuke laughed, and refused to wonder why it only felt okay because it was the four of them together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Kakashi POV: Man of Mystery because I damn well say so.


	3. Chamber

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything's fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings: More mild horror imagery, descriptions of characters struggling with insomnia and its after-effects.

_Kakashi_

"So, I don't understand you."

Kakashi blinked his one available eye in an upward direction, and then at the stack of papers on his desk, and refused to admit to himself that he was a little bit pissed to be caught actually grading shit. He had a _reputation_ to maintain. A reputation made of _lazy asshole_ , and he'd worked so hard to cultivate it, too.

"None ever do," he answered solemnly, and refused to reach for his orange book, because that would obviously be a cover at this point, and he wasn't going to let this asshat win. "Accept it. Embrace it. I am anti-understandable."

The man standing across from him, a math teacher from the lower level, made a face. It was a face that Kakashi inspired in all who knew him. An expression that communicated emotional pain without words, a work of art that Kakashi always took time to savor. Because he was a fucking connoisseur, had a Master's degree in English Literature and also How to Be a Mysterious Dickhead, and that meant it was an art form for him.

"I mean," the man continued, rather bravely really, considering that Kakashi's blank face was the stuff of legends, and that's what he was looking at now. "You pretend like you don't care. Like being a teacher is…offensive to you? But then your test scores. Are off the charts."

"Hmmm," Kakashi hummed non-committedly, and turned his attention back to grading.

Sakura had answered her questions neatly, thoroughly, and with the ease of someone who understood exactly what a teacher was looking for in textbook answers.

Sasuke had answered his questions in a way that managed to communicate both _I am an actual genius_ and _But also, fuck you and your quizzes, Kakashi-Sensei._ It was actually rather impressive. Kakashi's heart was positively swollen with pride.

Naruto had answered exactly half of his questions correctly, before apparently becoming bored with the entire institution of education. The bottom half of his paper was decorated instead with an extremely detailed picture of a cat, and the words _Boom. Kittyface._ Scribbled into the margins.

Kakashi fucking loved that child.

He gave Sakura the 'A' she deserved, because she'd probably actually try to kill him if he didn't. He gave Sasuke a 'B', because watching annoyance and borderline murderous rage darken his face made Kakashi's day considerably brighter. And on top of Naruto's paper, he scribbled a bright, red '100%' and after a moment of serious thought, added the words 'You're a fucking moron' underneath, using a cheerful smiley face as his ending punctuation.

"Aren't…aren't you going to grade the rest of them, Kakashi-Sensei?" the math teacher asked, a bit desperately now, because he so clearly didn't understand why Kakashi was opening his orange book, when he'd only graded three papers.

"Meh. These three are my favorites. The rest of them suck, and shall receive no feedback from me."

The math teacher staggered a little.

"I…you…wow, that's against all kinds of rules."

Kakashi gave him a one-eyed smile. The kind that communicated, 'How fucking cute are you, that you think I care, come here and let me snuggle you with my scorn and bad habits'. The math teacher began to look just a little bit desperate.

"Kakashi-sensei!" sang out a new voice. "Light of my life, bane of my existence, I need to swaddle myself in your presence!"

"Holy shit," the math teacher added, spooked, and then escaped out the door by ducking around the new body.

"And I'll never see him again," Kakashi concluded happily.

Hiro, the science teacher from Kakashi's grade, and also Kakashi's closest friend/confidante/future hospital bed buddy when their livers finally surrendered this bullshit battle against their totally righteous alcohol consumption, grinned wide and bright and a little maniacal and boosted himself up to sit cross-legged on Kakashi's desk.

"I thought we agreed not to frighten the fluffy duckling-type teachers," he pointed out. "Because they so obviously can't handle the sheer weight of our awesome."

"I am innocent. I am blameless. He initiated contact, and I am never responsible for what comes out of my mouth."

"Accurate," Hiro said with a seasoned nod. He pulled Naruto's assignment out from underneath his leg, and studied it. "I love this child. Love him. He lit a whole set of beakers on fire during our last class experiment."

"That…completely defies the laws of physics."

"I _know_ ," Hiro said, and grinned at Naruto's cat picture like it was his first-born child. "He's going places. I mean, potentially to juvie or maybe the bottom of a muddy river. But still. Places."

"This right here? Is why our fearless leader has an ulcer. Another one. Multiple ulcers caused by us."

"He loves us," Hiro agreed cheerfully. "He just expresses it by growing holes in his stomach lining."

"Hiro. I…you remind me. Of someone."

Hiro tilted his head a little, mouth caught in his ever-present grin, looking ready to cause trouble, always.

"Yeah? Who's that?"

"I don't know."

"Okay. Well, while you're pondering that, want to go and rearrange the principal's office, and then act like it always looked that way, no really sir, I don't understand what the problem is?"

"Yeah." Kakashi shook his head, shook away the puzzling sensation of seeing a different person under someone's skin, the curious sound of falling rocks, where was that coming from? "Yeah, let's do that."

"Awesome." Hiro put down Naruto's assignment gingerly, like it was made of precious gemstones. "I'm thinking desk upside down and in the corner?"

"Yeah," Kakashi said, and shook himself a little harder, cleared the lingering cobwebs away, committed himself to this endeavor. "And his rolling chair on top."

….

After school detention was just the best. Best thing ever. Better even than the time he and Hiro had woken up after a night of many adult beverages in their boxers, covered in glitter and something that looked like baking soda, with the entire contents of Hiro's lab and the neighbor's cat inside the living room.

They still weren't one hundred percent clear on what exactly had gone down that night, but obviously it had been awesome, and mutually agreed upon that it was actually even better for the uncertainty.

But, this. _This_. Sasuke dragged himself in after the final bell like there was a firing squad awaiting him inside Kakashi's classroom. Naruto fell through the doors five minutes later, face-first and clutching armfuls of various snack bags. Sakura followed directly behind him, satisfied smile on her face suggesting that she had been the one to help Naruto enter the room.

"I don't think we're supposed to have food," Sasuke said, just a little bit desperately, and seriously, how was he even still fighting this? "This is detention. Aren't we supposed to just…sit? Silently?"

"Kakashi-Sensei doesn't care," Naruto said, bounding to his feet and arranging the snack bags in an intricate pyramid. "Right, Kakashi-Sensei?"

"Oh, are you still here?"

"See!" Naruto beamed, a smile so bright it bordered on blinding. "Sasuke. We have _so much time_. To talk. To _bond_." _  
_

"I hate," Sasuke informed the inside of his elbow, mouth muffled by his sleeve.

"Hate what, Sasuke?" Sakura asked, settling herself comfortably on the sill beneath the window.

" _Everything_."

The next hour passed in a whirlwind of cheese crackers, Naruto's howling laughter every time Sasuke attempted to death-threat him into submission, Sakura smiling soft and sweet and then egging Naruto on in a voice like spun sugar. If Kakashi were a little less cool, he would have started snapping pictures seven minutes in. He could have labeled the photos a collection, and called it "The Progression of Sasuke's Baby Panda Pain". Could have included a couple of shots of Naruto attempting to stick pretzel sticks in Sasuke's ears as he fought desperately to maintain stony silence, of Naruto attempting to demonstrate exactly how he would have won that fight between the two of them by performing increasingly bizarre and borderline obscene acrobatics while Sasuke and Sakura looked on in bewildered horror, of Sakura suggesting so nice and gentle that Sasuke's hair might be long enough to braid, of Naruto _actually attempting to braid it_.

Kakashi wasn't even embarrassed to admit that he was using his orange book to mask legitimate tears of laughter by the end of the hour.

Sasuke ran from the room like a scalded cat as soon as Kakashi waved them away but they'd all seen his grin, towards the end, when he'd elbowed Naruto to floor (because Naruto had been descending upon Sasuke's hair with a gleam in his eyes and a truly terrifying level of concentration). And so it was understandable that Naruto's, "Night, Crazy Teacher" was filled with a soft sort of contentment.

There was one little mouse left standing in the inevitable vortex of absent sound that accompanied Naruto's departure. Kakashi wasn't even surprised, not really at all.

"Sakura, shouldn't you be scampering on home before Naruto decides that the three blocks to your house are an unacceptable safety risk and comes back to escort you?"

"Kakashi-sensei."

He waited. Because he knew she wasn't done.

"Kakashi-sensei. Please. Don't."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Sakura."

"Please. Just…please. Okay?"

Kakashi didn't answer. After a while, Sakura walked out the door.

….

The next day, Naruto brought board games. He and Sasuke fought ferociously across the chosen battlefield, slinging insults and denouncing entire family ancestries, while Sakura quietly dominated them both in the background, and Kakashi pinched his game piece between his fingers and never actually allowed it to touch the board.

"What the fuck, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said fondly, after Kakashi ducked out on rolling the dice again by claiming an allergic reaction to numbers represented by dots.

Kakashi just gifted him with a sleepy eye-smile and kept all of his attention fixed on a different student.

Sasuke's face had been growing darker and darker as the game progressed, sleep-bruised eyes fluttering to the walls around him, shoulders twisting tight and restless. Maybe from getting his ass kicked so badly, but probably from something else, and Kakashi wasn't even surprised when he hissed out a frustrated, " _Fuck_ this," and pushed back from the table they'd been playing at.

Naruto was up and on him instantly, hands cupping Sasuke's elbows and arms, because Naruto would never be okay with Sasuke leaving. Sakura watched with quiet eyes, her game piece curled against her palm, waiting and watching instead of immediate action.

"Let go," Sasuke said, and Naruto made a soft sound of discontent, because he hated it when Sasuke's voice went empty like that. "Just…Idiot…Kakashi-sensei, I'll come make up my detention another time, okay? I can't…I need to _go_."

Sakura stayed silent, but Kakashi watched her open palms curl into fists and knew that she would give exactly zero fucks about throwing punches to keep Sasuke stationary.

"Kakashi-sensei," Sasuke said again, and he didn't say please, but they could all hear it trembling on the air.

"Don't go," Naruto said. "C'mon Bastard. Stay."

"Get _off_ ," Sasuke hissed, and shoved an elbow into Naruto's stomach. Naruto chose to see the action as an invitation and inched even closer to Sasuke's back. "Why do you even…why do you _care_ , you don't even know me, not really, get the hell off you _idiot_."

"Meh," Naruto said, and Sasuke's tightened fists meant that he'd accurately interpreted the sound as 'Doesn't matter, you're so totally ours anyway, suck it up and sit your ass down, just _try_ and mosey out that door, I will bite your ankle and everything'.

Mouth thinned to a tight line, grey eyes dark and desperate, Sasuke looked to Kakashi once again. For a moment, everyone just breathed, still and silent.

And then Kakashi smiled and said, "No redos, student-mine! Looks like you'll have to tough it out with your friends."

Sasuke's shoulders slumped, dark eyes bruised with exhaustion and something like _relief_ , and Kakashi thought to himself that maybe this was always what Sasuke had needed to hear.

You're not leaving. We're not letting you.

And then Naruto laughed and punched Sasuke's shoulder, and Sakura added some comment about the fact that the boys weren't allowed to rage-quit the game just because they were getting their asses kicked, and Kakashi was able to settle back to watching them, watching _out_ for them, as he always did.

His mouth stayed dry, so dry, and his heart continued to beat hard and fast beneath his jacket though, even after the kids had finished their game and gone home, sleepily content and strangely satisfied.

"Kid is made of bitch-fits," Hiro commented later, over chicken fingers and beer. "Like, ninety percent of his DNA. Dedicated to bitch-fits."

"So you don't think I should have let him leave? Make up detention by his solitary little self?"

Hiro hummed thoughtfully and sucked salt off of his fingertips.

"Nah," he said. "Sad panda needs some friends." Hiro smiled and tipped his beer in Kakashi's direction. "Everyone needs friends. Even if they don't want them. Right?"

Kakashi smiled back. It felt like razorblades against his cheeks.

"I miss you," he said.

Hiro laughed, eyebrows barely curved in confusion.

"Aww, thanks snuggle-bunches. Good thing I'm right here then, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Kakashi brought his beer to his face, swallowed hard. "Yeah. Good thing."

…

On the third day, Naruto brought a bag of homemade treats, with notes written by his mom taped to the containers.

"She said that I need to get over my angst boner," Sasuke said with something like real anguish in his voice. "And she signed it with a lipstick kiss."

"She told me that I need to use _my_ boner," Sakura said, and Kakashi feared the way she sounded so approving. "On Naruto."

Naruto just grinned and grinned and helped himself to some homemade banana bread.

Kakashi had a note as well. On cheerful pink paper, it said the following:

_Hi Kakashi-Sensei!_

_Don't give Naruto your porn. Not because I care if he looks at porn or not, but it's a special joy for me to give him MY porn and watch him traumatize himself thinking about where it came from._

_XOXOXOXO!_

_Kushina_

Kakashi grinned so hard beneath his mask that he feared his face might break. Especially since, underneath Kushina's note, a different handwriting added:

_Sorry about the XOXOXO. I already told her that a threesome was out, no matter what a 'sexy scarecrow-thing' you are._

_Minato_

Sasuke sat at his desk with his head buried in his arms.

"I can't decide if your mom wants me to laugh or cry," he said flatly, but the corners of his mouth were twitching in a smile as he stared at his plate full of stuffed tomatoes that Naruto's mom had stuck Sasuke's note to.

"That's her way," Naruto said wisely, with a nod. "Don't worry. Soon you'll start to interpret it as love."

Kakashi reached out and gave Sakura's back a gentle poke, disguising it as an accidental bump as he reached for the bag of cookies.

"What's wrong, Sasuke?" she asked, giving Kakashi a short glare that told him she hadn't needed his prompting.

Sasuke looked over, fingers freezing from where he'd been trying to ninja a tomato out of the bag while simultaneously maintaining his apparent belief that the entire institution of food was beneath his notice.

"Nothing," he said, with a frown.

"Your eyes look like someone punched them out," Naruto added helpfully, spraying crumbs all over the desk. "And I know it wasn't me this time."

Sasuke's frown deepened, but he also flushed a little.

"Just…whatever," he said. "Haven't been sleeping well. It's nothing."

"Nightmares?" Sakura asked.

Sasuke shot Sakura a glare that might have sent her crying, once upon a time. But now, she simply raised her eyebrow back at him, and Sasuke huffed, before turning his head away.

" _Nothing_ ," he repeated, firm but still gentler that he could have been.

Sakura nodded, face tense. Sasuke retreated to the corner, tomato clutched gently between his fingers. He didn't say anything for a long while, but he let Naruto poke at his ears all of three times before punching him in the face, so Kakashi figured he was okay for the moment.

….

After detention, once again.

"Sakura! Two special visits in one week. I'm touched, humbled, ready to burst into manly tears of joy-"

"Kakashi-sensei."

"Sakura."

"Please."

"You know this isn't up to me."

…

Sasuke fell asleep in Kakashi's class the next day. Kakashi left him to it, and shooed Naruto and Sakura out the door after the bell, dismissing Sakura's wordless worry and Naruto's babbles of, "Bah, Kakashi-sensei, he's my soft and sleepy bestie. _Let me snuggle him_."

He spent almost half of his planning period reading with the door firmly locked while Sasuke made soft, helpless sounds against his desk.

When Sasuke finally sat up, hair disheveled and eyes wide and strangely lost, he stared around at the empty room silently for a moment before locking his eyes on Kakashi.

Kakashi didn't say what he wanted to say. Sasuke didn't say anything at all.

What Kakashi said instead was, "Look at your sleep cheeks. All adorable and shit. Let me pinch them."

And it had made things a little more normal, a little more balanced, as Sasuke made his scandalized escape out the door.

That afternoon, in detention, Sakura knew better than to ask, and Kakashi hit Naruto in the face with a chalkboard eraser before he could try, so they were okay.

But it didn't take away the slump of Sasuke's shoulders, or the way he stared at the walls around them like he was expecting them to disappear.

….

The last day of detention was awful. Really, really awful, because Naruto dragged himself in late, with an exhausted smile that seemed so, so wrong on his perpetually happy face.

"Naruto," Sakura said immediately, worry evident in her voice.

"Hey guys," he said. "Sorry I was late, Crazy Teacher."

Sasuke frowned and said, "You look like shit, idiot," in a way that _almost_ managed to mask the concern underneath it.

"Yeah," Naruto scrubbed at his eyes with a tiny frown. "Yeah, just…bad dreams last night, I guess."

"Bad dreams," Sasuke repeated, and Sakura refused to look at him.

"Do you want to lie down?" she asked Naruto instead.

"No," he said. "No, c'mon, last detention, right? Let's do something!"

They played a game of towering bricks, stacking pieces together and then pulling them out one by one, hoping that their fingers wouldn't make it fall. And it felt wrong, despite Naruto's perfectly normal shouts of, "Stop cheating, you angsty bastard!" and Sasuke's deadpan answers of, "How. How do you _cheat_ at this game, you idiot?" and Naruto's outraged, "Stop _willing_ the tower to fall when I'm touching it, using your inner manpain for evil is _against the rules_."

"Hey, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said at one point. "You can play, you know. I don't think the tower will fall down just because you touched it. I mean, obviously you're going to suck at games because you're all old and shit, but still I think you can try, right?"

"Old and shit," Kakashi repeated, with real suffering in his voice. "You're such a comfort to me. Just for that, I'm going to tell your mom I'm totally down for that threesome."

Naruto squawked, but didn't even look surprised, mostly just resigned, and that made the burn of victory all the sweeter.

He reached out with careful fingers, keeping one hand firmly on his book. The tower wobbled, but it didn't fall. Kakashi breathed a sigh of relief, and wondered why he felt guilty for it.

Sakura poked at the tower next. Her fingers were quick and nimble as she pushed a brick free, and for a moment, Kakashi thought it would hold, despite the wobbling. But then it crumpled inward, exploding across the desk and spinning to the floor with a crash that seemed very loud in the sudden silence of the room.

"Oh," Sakura said, and she didn't look surprised, but really horribly sad instead.

Naruto and Sasuke began to bicker about who had weakened the tower more (only, was that the beginnings of a question in Sasuke's eyes, a spark of understanding, not yet fully formed or comprehended, that twisted Kakashi's guts like snakes).

Sakura met Kakashi's eyes across the fallen tower. Gently, protectively, she cupped her hands over the scattered pieces, and the heartbreak in her eyes made his throat tight, his eyes stomach burn.

Kakashi put his book back over his face. But it wasn't tears of laughter he was hiding this time around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Sakura's POV: Practicality and Apologies (or the lack thereof).


	4. Reload

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uh.  
> Uh.  
> Sorry?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings: Mild horror imagery, insomnia, nightmares.

_Sakura_

She was not a horrible person. She wanted everyone aware of that.

She was practical. Always, infinitely practical. Naruto, bless his baby kitten soul, was a blunt instrument at the best of times. Kakashi was a master strategist, but couldn't muster any fucks to actually use his brilliance. And Sasuke might have had the genius brain, but she was the one who had enough actual patience and perseverance to use her smarts.

So, when Naruto bounced his way up to her desk on Monday morning, eyes bruised dark enough to make her stomach seize, Sakura forced her smile a little brighter, a little bit wider.

"Sit down before you fall over, idiot," she offered as a greeting. "You look like ten kinds of crap."

"My heart is whispering filthy, dirty things in your direction," Naruto assured her, and slumped into his seat.

"Nightmares again?" Sakura asked, and stuck her trembling hands beneath her desk.

She would ride this out.

"Weird ones," Naruto confirmed. "My hands went through my mom's back when I tried to hug her. Like a ghost."

"Did you tell her? What'd she say?"

"She smacked me upside the head. Told me, "We snuggled you plenty when you were a baby, knock it off with the goddamn tiny violin". Then she hugged me, and made sure I could feel it."

Sakura laughed.

"I really want to meet your mom," she said.

Naruto grinned at her, and dropped his chin down on the desk.

"Sasuke says you're not allowed," he reminded her. "I think he, like, fears the apocalypse or some shit."

"I have so many reasons," Sasuke said, as he dropped down into the seat on Sakura's other side. "So many reasons for wanting that not to happen, Idiot."

"Sakura, look! It's not even lunchtime, and Sasuke is using his words already!"

Sasuke squinted one annoyed eyeball in Naruto's general direction.

"It is far, far too early in the morning for your special brand of stupid," he decided, and buried his head inside his arms.

"Aww," Naruto said. "Sasuke used all of his words already. All done."

"Your fault," Sakura said with a smile. "You brought it up. You spooked him."

"Like a nervous little panda baby!" Naruto sang triumphantly, and Sasuke snarled from inside the cavern of his elbows.

The classroom door clicked open, and Kakashi meandered in, hands shoved deep inside his pockets.

"Sensei," Naruto said blankly. "We have fifteen minutes until class starts. And then ten minutes until you're supposed to show up. Why…I can't…," he turned to Sakura. "I feel like I'm looking at a unicorn."

Even Sasuke was peeking over his arms, brow furrowed at the sight of their timely teacher.

"You're early, Sensei," Sakura said.

"Didn't want to sleep anymore," Kakashi-sensei said, and underneath his eye-smile, the dark shadows dragged all the way underneath his mask.

Underneath the desk, Sakura's hands tightened into fists.

She would ride this out.

Naruto blinked, and said, "Man, nightmares must be _contagious_ or some shit."

But Sasuke eased up straight in his chair, and fixed too-smart eyes on their teacher.

"Nightmares," he said, voice flat.

Kakashi-sensei's eye smile curved even brighter.

"Strangest thing," he said, and there was a laugh in his voice, but wow, it wasn't funny at all.

Sasuke's eyes narrowed.

"Must be a boy thing," Sakura said, light and easy. "I've slept great."

Naruto snorted, Sasuke stared with those narrowed eyes, and Kakashi-sensei shook his head, like maybe he was disappointed.

This time, it was Sakura who had zero fucks to give.

She _would_ ride this out.

…

"I know what you're doing," Sasuke said later, as they sat around the lunch table. Naruto was still in line, arguing with the lunch lady about the proper ways to cook ramen.

She thought a pork and soy base was preferable. Naruto insisted (loudly, always loudly) that miso was so much better. Naruto was now attempting to show her the wrongness of her ways with every fiber of his being.

Sakura tapped her fingers against the lunch tray.

"Do you?" she asked. "I mean, are you sure, Sasuke?"

"I'm sure," Sasuke said, and absolutely did _not_ smile as Naruto pumped a fist in the air and howled his outrage to the world. "He's going to change her mind."

"Are you going to tell him?" Sakura asked, watching with soft eyes as the lunch lady shoved her nose against Naruto's and snarled.

"I don't know," Sasuke said. "I mean, he's never going to see it on his own. He never could."

"No," Sakura agreed, and smiled gently. The lunch lady was laughing now, and tapping her finger against Naruto's nose while Naruto grinned bright and wide. "He's good at other things."

"I understand," Sasuke said. "But Sakura, these nightmares. Are you really not having them?"

"I have them. I'm better at ignoring them, I think."

Sasuke sighed.

"We're totally having miso the next time they serve ramen," Naruto announced as he dropped into his seat. "That lunch lady loves me forever and _ever_."

"She tried to hit you with her ladle," Sakura pointed out. "We witnessed this."

"Meh," Naruto said and attacked his food.

Sasuke watched with mild revulsion as bits of food decorated the table around Naruto's tray.

"You're disgusting," Sasuke observed.

Naruto grinned around cheeks bulging with food.

"Are you going to hit me with a ladle too?" he asked, spraying even more food on the table as he spoke.

Sasuke rolled his eyes. Sakura laughed and started in on her own food.

….

Naruto invited Sakura over to study for Kakashi-sensei's English test ("Sakura, he _winked_ at me when he gave the study guide. _Winked_. There is _something horrible and awful on this test_."). Sakura agreed, mostly because after everyone telling her that she _couldn't_ meet Mama Uzumaki, she _really_ kind of had to.

Sasuke overheard Naruto's plans, folded his arms to express his displeasure, and had a completely silent panic attack until Naruto laughed and invited him along as well. Kakashi caught them just before the final bell, gave Naruto a happy-eyed smile, and requested that he 'give my love to your mother, Naruto'.

They left school that day to the accompanying soundtrack of Naruto shrieking, "YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO OUT-PERVERT MY MOM, SENSEI."

"I'm sure Kakashi-sensei was just kidding, Naruto," Sakura said as they walked down the sun-soaked streets.

"He wasn't," Naruto said. "But seriously, he should stop trying. Mom always wins."

Sasuke didn't say much on the walk over, but he started to look more and more like someone marching towards a firing squad rather than strolling through suburbia.

"She can't be that bad," Sakura muttered as Naruto turned onto a neatly clipped lawn.

Bright yellow house. Small and cheerful-looking. Where was the bad here?

"You don't even _know_ ," Sasuke said back, and his voice sounded heavy and haunted.

"Home!" Naruto shouted, as they stepped through the door. "Hey, Womb of Awesome! Brought some people for you!"

"You did not," Sakura said flatly. "You did not just reference your mother's womb, Naruto, what the hell?"

"Her womb is totally awesome, though," Naruto said reassuringly. "I mean, it carted me around, right?"

"I hate you," Sasuke said earnestly. "So much."

There was the patter of soft feet on the floor, and then a pretty redheaded woman was stepping through the doorway. Sakura had half a second to think, _Huh, she's pretty, what the hell was Sasuke going on about_ before Naruto's mom caught sight of the boy in question and pretty much KO'd every ear bud in the vicinity by howling, "Baby Panda! _LET ME LOVE YOU!_ "

She lunged past Sakura and her own son in order to scoop Sasuke into a straight-backed hug. Sasuke made a noise that suggested he might have been experiencing severe internal suffering, Naruto leaned against the wall and laughed himself sick, and Sakura blinked at the speed with which things had occurred.

"Aww," Kushina said as she released a red-faced Sasuke. "Your manpain is _just as adorable_ as I remember."

Sasuke shut his eyes like maybe he could wish himself somewhere else.

"Mom, this is Sakura," Naruto said, once he'd managed to transform his hysterical laughter into semi-hysterical snickers of, 'Ha, oh my God, his _face_ ' and 'best, best day of my life, just, best _ever_ '.

"Future mother of my grand-babies," Kushina recognized with a nod, abandoning a scandalized Sasuke to clutch at Sakura's hands instead.

"Yet to be determined," Sakura said back, charmed and entertained and not even _trying_ to hide it. "Way, _way_ yet to be determined."

Kushina nodded.

"I understand," she said solemnly. "There has not been _nearly_ enough pining up in this bitch for him to have won you yet."

"Did you just call me a bitch?" Naruto demanded over her shoulder. "I mean, normal, that's normal, but I just want to be sure."

"Here to study?" Kushina asked Sakura. Sakura nodded. "Okay." She touched Naruto's cheek. "Go. Learn. Let them pump up your brain. But no threesome sex, that shit is noisy, and I could get a migraine."

" _Wow_ , Mom," Naruto said, while Sakura choked on her own laugh and Sasuke froze like a hunted animal.

"Kakashi-sensei sends his love," Sakura said, pausing on their way up the stairs, because why the hell not.

"OH MY GOD, SAKURA," Naruto's voice bellowed from the landing.

Sasuke didn't laugh, not loud enough to hear anyway, but Sakura could _feel_ his smug satisfaction from all the way upstairs.

Kushina nodded, her smile small and normal.

"You'll do," she said. "Yeah, you will. Keep those boys under control then, okay?"

"STOP _PLOTTING_. I REGRET EVER SAYING YOUR WOMB WAS AWESOME."

…..

Sakura nodded off over their English textbooks. She hadn't meant to, but she really hadn't been sleeping well, and Naruto had been busy trying to cop a Sasuke snuggle.

("If you touch me again, I will bruise your kidneys."

"But Sasuke! Bro Code says it's perfectly acceptable for us to snuggle!")

In her dreams, Sakura didn't leave Naruto's house. Instead, she wandered her way downstairs, and into the kitchen, where Kushina was busy at the stove.

Sakura could see right through her. The stove, the clock, and Naruto sticking his tongue out in the family picture on the wall. All as clear as a bell, because Kushina was no more tangible than a ghost.

"This is going to be so much worse for him," Sakura whispered. "God. Really, really bad."

"Sakura?" Kushina said. "Oh, did those tragically misguided boys send you for snacks or something? Because he's my son, but I'll totally help you feed him your fist instead."

Kushina spun to face her.

Her face was gone. Missing. A blank slate of smooth, featureless skin.

Sakura didn't scream. But something, some sound, left her throat and she reeled back hard enough to hit the wall.

"Something wrong?" Kushina asked, and the sound was coming from her, but there was _no mouth_ to make it.

Sakura felt the sharp sting of vomit claw the back of her throat.

"Sakura? Sweetheart? You're so pale. What's wrong?"

Sakura squeezed her eyes shut tight.

When she opened them again, she was staring at Naruto's worried face.

Oh. Guess she had screamed after all.

"Sakura?" Naruto said, and his voice was stretched and strained with fear. "Sakura, Sakura, please be okay."

On the bed, Sasuke watched with eyes gone wide and solemn.

"Do you need a pillow?" Naruto babbled on. "A bucket? A hug?"

"Wow, yeah, okay," said a new voice, and then Naruto was being shoved to the side. "I blame all of that on your father, seriously child. Sakura?" Kushina asked, eyes warm and concerned. "Are you all right? Want me to smack him? It might make you feel better."

In the background, Naruto squawked.

Sakura smiled, smiled so wide, like she couldn't still see through Kushina's skin.

"Fine," Sakura said, and stared at the wall behind Kushina's forehead. "Thanks. Just fine."

….

Sakura was waiting by the classroom window, early the next morning, before the boys arrived. She watched the sun creep silver over the horizon, and smiled to herself when she heard the classroom door creak open.

"This is a thing," she said into the softened air. "That you do, isn't it? You get here early, and then _leave again_. So you can be late on purpose."

"Actually, the man in my dreams told me to rise early today. So, nothing to do with what you said at all."

Sakura laughed.

"I call bullshit, Sensei."

Kakashi loped over, to lean against the wall at her side.

"You look terrible," Sakura said. "Really awful, Sensei."

Kakashi scrubbed a hand over the exposed bits of his skin, which showed pale cheeks and eyes bruised almost black.

"The sound of falling rocks," he said, with a small smile. "Apparently, not so conducive to my sleep patterns."

Sakura leaned her forehead against the slowly warming window panes.

"Your friend?" she asked. "Hiro-Sensei?"

"He reminds me of someone."

There was a long silence. Kakashi stayed quiet and at her side as cars began to roll across the parking lot, dropping the early bird students by the front doors.

They both watched as Sasuke's pretty, smiling mother stopped at the curb. As a small, sweet-looking girl fought her way through the car doors and launched herself into Sasuke's arms.

The little girl cupped his face, smile wide and bright. Sasuke gave her a well-practiced bounce. And then she tapped tiny fingers over his forehead, and Sasuke froze like she'd slapped him instead.

Sakura closed her eyes.

"When?" Kakashi asked.

"Today, I think. Depending on how Naruto looks when he comes in."

"All right. So, which are you hoping for, Sakura?"

"Sensei?"

Kakashi eye-smiled in her direction. Sakura was really starting to hate that smile.

"I mean, do you want him to look bad? Or are we still stretching out the finish line."

The door opened again, and Sasuke eased his way inside. He looked pale, exhausted, and a little like someone had taken a knife to his insides.

Sakura crinkled up her nose, and offered Kakashi a fake-smile of her own.

"Don't know what you mean, Sensei," she sang, and hopped off of the window ledge to greet Sasuke.

…

" _You_ ," Naruto bellowed, as he drop-kicked the door in. "You are _hiding something from me_!"

Bland faces were truly heroic when represented in triplicate unison.

Naruto gave exactly zero shits, and whipped an accusatory finger in his friends' direction.

"You have been _hanging out_ without me!" he said. "Violating the Bonding Bro Code. Not _cool_ , you guys."

"Aw," Kakashi said, like he found Naruto adorable, but also pretty tragically stupid.

"Of course you would think that," Sakura said sweetly. " _Of course_ you would."

Sasuke looked too confused for a snarky comment.

"Sakura isn't a Bro," he pointed out.

"Sakura is _totally_ a Bro, Sasuke, where the hell have you been?" Naruto demanded.

Sasuke flipped a wary look in Sakura's direction. She smiled at him, with all of her teeth.

"But back to the point," Naruto said. "Which is that you all suck forever, and need to include me in your secret club meetings. Before I, like, burst into manly tears and compose sonnets to the lost wonder of our beautiful Bro Bonds."

"Is that a thing?" Sasuke wondered aloud. "I mean, is _that_ what we've been building?"

Kakashi didn't say anything, but he tapped the fist Naruto held out to him with solemn solidarity.

"Wow," Sakura said, with great affection.

"Listen, I know you guys are keeping something from me," Naruto said, still grinning through his suspicion. Because he trusted them that much. "Secret meetings, and your smiles are full of shit, come on guys, I may be dumb sometimes but I'm not _stupid_."

Kakashi said, "Hmmm," and got out his book, which Sakura took to mean he was actively _not_ participating in this conversation. And Sasuke was staring at the floor, fists clenched, so Sakura figured it was all on her.

Again.

"How'd you sleep last night, Naruto?" she asked, nice and sweet.

He tilted his head at her.

"Like shit," he said. "Nightmares, again. But Sakura, what…"

"You're right, you know," she interrupted. "You're not stupid. I mean, you fail at recognizing them, _still_ , and that is actually a little sad, Naruto, but you're not stupid."

Naruto's smile dimmed, disappeared. Watching it vanish felt like razor blades sliding across skin.

"Something's wrong," he said. "Something…something isn't right."

"None of it is right," Sasuke corrected softly. "You've always been the best at this, Sakura. At recognizing them, anyway. When did you know?"

"The first day. When I cracked yours and Naruto's skulls together after the fight." Sakura smiled, soft and warm. "Guess it triggered the familiar."

Kakashi made a soft sound, and Sakura knew he was remembering how she'd frozen. After smacking their heads together, how she'd paused. Evaluated. Readjusted.

"I don't get it," Naruto said, but he sounded shaky now. Unsure of his footing.

"Something," Sasuke said. "I…can't remember what it's called, that's part of it, I think. But something created this. All of this."

"It's not…"

"Real," Kakashi provided helpfully, never looking away from his book. "Not real." He paused. Considered. "Sorry."

"I…" Naruto blinked, a lot. "You're telling me my house, my parents, not real? Wow, fuck you guys, not funny at all."

"It's really not," Kakashi agreed equably, and turned the page.

"The nightmares," Sasuke said. "Things started clicking together once I started having them. It's all a little fuzzy still, but I take that my life is…not so pretty? Not so nice? In the other place, that is."

He was looking at her. So Sakura nodded.

"I don't…" Naruto shook his head. He looked lost, halfway destroyed. Torn between his desire for this to be real and his instinct to trust his friends. "My parents? If they're not real in my nightmares, does that mean…" Sakura watched him, green eyes calm but not unkind. Naruto laughed, a jagged sound that hurt the ears, and slapped his forehead with an open palm. "So, who do I have? In this other place."

"You have me," Sakura said. "You have me, and you have Kakashi-sensei. And you're important. Naruto, you're so important. People need you."

"You, and Kakashi-Sensei. But not…"Naruto said, furrowed his brow in Sasuke's direction.

"Not so pretty," Sasuke repeated softly. "Not so nice."

Sakura closed her eyes, because she could hear the waterfalls in his head, the waterfalls and the words and his hand through Naruto's chest.

"There were signs," Kakashi added. "You might not have noticed them, Naruto, but they were there. The nightmares, obviously, but other things. You beating Sasuke's face in every time he tried to leave, for example."

"Shit," Naruto said, and fisted his hands into his hair.

Into the silence that followed, a cell phone rang. The song was loud, and obnoxiously bright.

"It's my mom," Naruto said softly.

"Don't," Sasuke said, as Naruto's fingers ghosted at the pockets of his pants.

Naruto's eyes were wide, so wide and blue and haunted. He shook his head, once, and then pulled the cell phone from his pocket.

"Mom," he said, and spun around to face the wall.

Sakura couldn't hear the other side of the conversation, but Naruto's hoarse, heavy laughter was loud in the quiet room.

"Yes, Mom, I made it to school. What? What the hell, I do not _wander_ …Oh, my God that was _one time_ and there were factors, _ramen-shaped_ factors, not my fault at all."

Naruto laughed again, and then froze. His shoulders went sharp and tight, and he sucked in a short breath.

"…What? No, yeah Mom, I'm fine. I have to go, if the teacher's see me on my phone, they'll take it, and I don't want you texting inappropriate things to the secretary again. No, I don't care how much she secretly adores you, she couldn't look me in the eyes for _weeks_ , Mom. Ha. Yeah, I guess. Okay, I'll see you later." Naruto paused, then hung his head. "Hey…Mom? I love you. You and all your crazy, you know that right? No, I'm fine, I'm fine. Just…tell dad the same, yeah? Okay. Bye."

Naruto hung up the phone. Rested his forehead against the wall.

"Her voice kept cutting out," he said softly. "Echoing, kind of. Like it was coming from a long ways away."

Sasuke closed his eyes.

"I'm not sorry," Sakura said, because really, it was time she laid her cards on the table. "For not telling you sooner. I know this…is horrible, Naruto, and it's going to hurt you the worst. But I'm not sorry. I knew this wasn't real. But. I wanted this for us."

"You wanted…"Sasuke repeated incredulously.

"Not _this_ ," Sakura countered, and turned calm eyes on the face of his growing anger. "Not the nightmares, or the pain. But…Sasuke is here. And Kakashi-sensei, your friend, and your smiles aren't so broken. And Naruto, you're loved, you're so loved, and nobody here ever rejected you because of who you are."

Naruto spun around. His eyes were wide, so wide, like he didn't recognize her, like she was the ghost.

"I didn't tell you," she said. "Because we were happy. Because I thought it might last. And I didn't care what I was seeing, because Sasuke was _smiling_ , and Naruto's mom kicked _ass_ , and you weren't looking at us like replacements for something else, Sensei."

"You knew, though. You saw from the beginning. That it wasn't real."

"That's okay," Sakura said, and smiled at Kakashi. "Really, it was, Sensei, because I'm always on the outside aren't I, just a little bit?"

"Sakura."

"It's fine. Sasuke, it's fine. I know where I fit, and I'm still a part of this, I still belong, but never as much as the rest of you." She shrugged. "I mean, there's a reason why I have the least to lose when we go back."

Kakashi laughed. Like he was proud, and wasn't that strange?

"A lot of special eyes where we come from," he said. "But you're the one that sees things, I guess."

"Naruto's a hero," Sakura agreed. "And Sasuke, he has a mission. And Sensei, you don't actually give a fuck, you just want to be where your important people are. But I'm normal. I haven't lost a lot yet. And I didn't tell you at first because I thought you might run away from something potentially good."

"Practical, Sakura," Kakashi said.

She smiled.

Always. Infinitely.

"It's the power of her uterus," Naruto said, softly, and he was starting to adjust, because he really was a hero, but he was still holding his phone like a lifeline. "That's what my mom would say."

"So much stronger than so many things," Sakura agreed, and reached out to squeeze his hands, to take away his cell phone with gentle fingers.

"I won't…Sakura, will we remember?" Sasuke asked. "What happened here?"

"I don't know."

"I should know this," Sasuke said, and shook his head slowly. "I know I should. But it's unclear, still, for me. Sakura, will I remember? My parents, and my sister, and not being so angry?"

"I think so," Sakura said. "But Sasuke, I don't think it's going to matter. Not for you. Not once you remember everything."

"Probably," Sasuke said softly. "But still I…I think I want to remember."

Naruto stared at Sasuke like he was losing more than just his parents. Bright and blue and burning.

"You can say that here," he said, almost helplessly.

There was a soft knock on the door, a knock and a student asking, "Um, Kakashi-sensei? Are you, like, creeping in there or something? Because I can wait in the cafeteria."

"We should move this along," Kakashi suggested, with a happy-eyed smile at the classroom door.

Sakura nodded.

Because she was practical, and it didn't make sense to drag this out anymore.

Naruto furrowed his brow, and then marched over to stand at Sasuke's side. He grabbed on to Sasuke's arm, ignoring Sasuke's eye roll and Sakura's smile because of course, of course he would try.

Sakura took a moment to survey the room, to smile at the leftover treats and scattered game pieces from detention. And then she locked her hands together.

"Kai."

As the world fell away, creeping black and silence, Sakura could have sworn she felt Naruto's cell phone, buzzing away in her palm, playing his mother's song.

…...

She woke up on the ground. Sore and stiff like she'd taken a beating, with a splitting headache, and a stomach rolling like ocean waves.

She could feel the dirt beneath her arms, heavy and damp. It smelled like Fire Country. Like the familiar. Her knuckles were covered by black leather, and she could feel the sweat building behind her forehead protector.

Home.

She stayed absolutely still, focused on the pain splitting up and down her sides, and the memories crowding her head, the old (Fire Country, bruised and bloody knuckles, fighting soft and subtle) and the new (high schools, harmless skirts, sweet cotton candy smiles) bleeding together, trying to find a way to fit.

In the corner, she could hear Kakashi-sensei, vomiting quietly against the stone floor.

But then she saw. Sasuke, on his feet, even though Sakura could see the headache, the confusion and the hurting on his face. Of course he was up, for him the physical had always paled in the face of his flight instinct.

And there was Naruto. Trying to struggle to his feet, scrabbling at the stones with fingers already gone bloody. Trying to stand, and failing, but still. Trying.

And that, that made sense too.

"Sasuke," Naruto croaked, horrible and helpless and _desperate_. "Sasuke, please, don't…"

But Sasuke just shook his head. Once, twice, eyes wide and dark in his pale and sweat-soaked face. And then he was gone, vanishing out the entrance of whatever land formation they were tucked inside (cave, maybe?)

Sakura closed her eyes against Naruto's tear-thickened cussing, against the sound of Kakashi's miserable heaving against the stones. She closed her eyes, and tipped her head back, because she was unsurprised.

Unsurprised, and always, infinitely practical.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuse, even years later.  
> Next up: Naruto POV: How to Play the Hero and Still Rage-Quit The Current Situation.


	5. Echoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OKAY, now that we're back in the ninja-verse, some quick notes about this story.  
> In this AU(ish?), Kakashi was the one who went with Naruto, Sakura, and Sai to try and retrieve Sasuke from Orochimaru. So no Yamato, which leads to a cascade effect of Naruto still being not-awesome at controlling the fox.  
> This is not the last time in this story I flail all over canon and then...fail to mention it. Just. Be warned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: canon-compliant descriptions of neglect when describing Naruto's childhood.

_Naruto_

"Ow. Hey, Sakura, ow!"

"Moron. Stop moving, you're already healed. Just let me fix the rest."

Sakura traced warm fingers across Naruto's ribs, easing the rest of the ache, and the feeling like maybe Naruto was going to spray his guts all over the walls of the cave, like Kakashi-sensei had done. Any other time, he'd totally be getting his leer on, what with Sakura's fingers all up and down his sides. But he felt….raw, maybe? Scraped up and beat down _inside,_ where his hurts didn't heal as easily. His fox had fixed the physical wounds, the bleeding and the scrapes, but the nausea lingered like the total _bitch_ that it was.

Sakura finished with his sides, and traced thoughtful fingers against Naruto's forehead. For maybe the first time ever, Naruto jerked away from her hands, back against the wall.

"Hey," Sakura said, startled. "Hey. I was just going to…don't you have a headache?"

He did, in fact. A total monster of an ache behind his eyes, like tiny fucking trolls tap-dancing against his skull.

"Just," he said. "Just, it's a little crowded in here right now. You know?"

Sakura's eyes gentled.

"The fox?" she asked.

Naruto shrugged. Because, yeah, the fox was back, swollen beneath his skin and taking up far too much fucking space, and whispering horrible dirty dark things through his skull. But that, that he was used to ignoring, to shoving it down until the fox's howls faded into background noise.

But his mother's voice.

_What the shit, baby boy? Next time I need, like, a hug or a courtesy text before you skip out of my dimension. Grounded, so grounded, grounded forever and ever._

Yeah, he wasn't used to the memory of that, floating across his mind.

"Just leave it, Sakura. It'll go away eventually."

"It's been four days," Kakashi-sensei added, calm and cheerful and not at all sounding like a guy who'd just emptied his stomach lining across the rocks. "We've missed two check-ins."

"Which means Lady Tsunade will have sent a retrieval team," Sakura said, rocking back on her heels.

Naruto waved their concerns away with hands that went 'blah'.

"Yeah, great," he said. "Leave them a note, they can find it when they get here. We need to get our asses up and out and on the road already!"

"For what?" Kakashi asked, and his eye-smile was so fake it made Naruto want to punch it away.

"To go get Sasuke! We can't leave him alone with his boatloads of manpain, Sensei. It might ruin his perfect haircut, and then he won't be able to angst attractively anymore, and I'm pretty sure that'll like, send him into some kind of sadness spiral of shitty self-image that will definitely end in even more ass-bows, and Sensei, _do you want to be responsible for that_?"

"Naruto," Sakura said, and she sounded so, so tired.

"We have to go after him," he said. "We can't just…roll over and belly up now. He's so close; he hasn't _been_ this close in a long time. He was _here with us_ , Sakura, for days."

"Inside a genjutsu," Kakashi pointed out helpfully. "Where all the tragedies of his past had never happened."

"But did you see his face?" Naruto countered. "That wasn't normal Sasuke face. There was very little crazy-making, tragic-poetry spouting, 'Listen to the ballad of my angst, Naruto, it totally justifies the hand-wings and also my fist inside your chest' and that's pretty much his default expression these days, so anything else is a sign of improvement, true?"

_Damn straight, baby boy. You fight for your man!_

Naruto closed his eyes and took a second, because laughing in this situation would be so, so inappropriate. He knew that now. Granny Tsunade had dragged him into her office once and made the line very clear. With charts and visual aids and shit.

"He doesn't want us to follow him," Sakura said, and Naruto could see the reflection of that night, the night he'd left, filling up her eyes. "He _never_ wants us to follow him. Not the night he left. Not when we went after him at Orochimaru's base and Kakashi-Sensei had to stop him from stabbing your face. He never wants us to follow him."

Naruto furrowed his brow, honestly confused.

"And that's…stopped us before?"

Sakura laughed (it was kind of horrible, all soft and exhausted) and dropped her forehead against her hand.

"We have a mission," Kakashi pointed out. "Remember? That thing from the Hokage that we are now late for?"

"Recon in Earth Country," Sakura murmured against her palm.

"Sensei," Naruto said earnestly, blue eyes wide and innocent. "Sensei, lean close, and let me tell you _how many fucks_ I give about _a mission_ when Sasuke's idiot-ass is frolicking just outside the door somewhere."

"Frolicking," Kakashi-sensei repeated, voice flat like one of Naruto's frogs had squashed it.

"Frolicking," Naruto said, with relish. "You know he would. With the hair. And the shirts. With the neck cleavage."

"Wow," Kakashi said, and shut his eyes, probably in self-defense.

_Look at you, annoying people into defensive comas. My pride is legendary._

"Naruto, going off mission is like going rogue," Sakura said. "It could be seen as treason against the Leaf Village."

"Bah," Naruto said, and waved his hands again. "Granny Tsunade loves me."

"She threw her sake bottle at you, the last time we were in her office. You were annoying her, and she just. Threw the bottle. It dented the wall behind your head."

"It's a special, aggressive love," Naruto said proudly. "And she's not…yeah. She's not going to punish me for going after a teammate. Not her."

Silence.

And then Sakura lifted her head, and offered him a smile. A much nicer one this time.

"I should have guessed," she said. "Nothing stops you. Not for long."

This time, Naruto muscled up the leer.

"That's right, I can go forever and ever, Sakura."

She punched him in the head.

"And what about the mission, Sakura?" Kakashi asked, while Naruto lay on the cave floor and counted the stars suddenly sparkling above his skull. "Are you saying we should abandon it?"

"No, Kakashi-sensei. Naruto's right; leave a note for the retrieval team. They can pick up where we left off. We have to go after Sasuke."

_Get up, Naruto. Because your boy has no business angsting his way through anywhere without his teammates._

"Too many people talking," Naruto decided, sitting up with his fingers tight against his head, because it really did feel over-crowded, too full and throbbing with it. "Too much talking, we need to stop dicking around, and get going after our bastard. Kakashi-sensei, Sakura and I will come back for you if you want to wait here. But we need to go."

Kakashi eye-smiled at him, and it looked a little more normal this time.

"Oh, I was always going to go," he said. "He's our bastard, like you said."

Naruto huffed out a helpless laugh. Because _of course_ he would play the devil's advocate just for kicks.

"You're such a dick, Sensei," he said affectionately, and then dragged himself to his feet.

…

The thing was, Sakura said that he was fine. She smiled at him with her tired eyes, like he was a rock that she could always lean against, because he wouldn't budge an inch. And that was true, he'd always subscribed to the idea that something would fall the fuck down, if you threw yourself at it long enough.

But. That didn't mean that he didn't struggle. And listening to the sound of his mother's voice? Aching in whole new ways because he'd never had that before? A whole new level of suck that he was not yet accustomed to.

"You're distracted," Kakashi said, as Sakura traced letters into the cave wall for the retrieval team to find.

"Always," Naruto agreed. "By everything. Birds, bugs, big bowls of ramen…"

"I can still hear him, too. Hiro-sensei. He's laughing, and telling me to find the alcohol."

Naruto crumpled, shoulders curving inward.

"D'you think…they'll go away?"

"Do you want them to?" Kakashi asked.

"I…shit. Yeah, I don't know," Naruto said.

"They're not real, Naruto. You need to remember that."

"They were though," Naruto said, as softly as his voice ever got. "Once, they were real. Hiro-sensei, he was…your old teammate, right?"

"An almost exact copy, yes."

Naruto scrubbed at his eyes.

"That's all I've ever," he said. "I mean, that's the most I've ever had. Of my parents."

_We're here. Naruto, we love you._

Kakashi laughed. It wasn't a happy sound.

"You've always been terrible at genjutsu," he said, with great affection. "It's not an always kind of thing, but some ninja, skilled genjutsu casters, they can create a sort of after-image. An echo. It's meant to act as a distraction. To keep the victim occupied by what they were experiencing inside the illusion."

"Who…I mean, Sasuke's bastard brother is dead, right? Sasuke killed him. So who's strong enough to pull that kind of genjutsu on us?"

Kakashi furrowed his brow at him.

"Do you not remember who we were fighting?"

"Um. Sasuke-bastard?"

"Seriously."

"Sensei," Naruto said, and damn straight it was a whine. A manly whine. "My head is full. And it feels all fuzzy."

"He was there," Kakashi said. "You picked up on Sasuke's chakra signals on our way to Earth Country and took off like the great big moron you are sometimes."

"Boom," Sakura added from over by the wall. "You were gone. One track mind, Naruto, really."

"Whatever, you love me. Then what happened, Sensei?"

Kakashi sighed and leaned against the wall.

"We followed him to the cave. You drop-kicked your way inside, started screeching your usual beat about friendship and bonds and brotherhood…"

"I think you actually tried to flash-back him into giving up," Sakura inputted. "It was inspiring."

"And Sasuke looked about ready to use your face for Chidori practice. But right when you boys started to rumble, Sasuke's new keeper showed up. Didn't seem to like the idea of us talking to his newest team member."

"He had the coat on," Naruto said slowly. "Sasuke. The one with the clouds. And so did…"

"Madara. Remember? His name is Madara Uchiha."

"Right. Okay. So, I'm starting to think that being a total dick-bag is like, an Uchiha family trait. Seriously."

"My question is," Sakura said, standing from her crouch and brushing off her palms. "Why would he leave Sasuke here? Inside the genjutsu, with us? Why didn't he break it and take him along?"

Kakashi shrugged.

"To remind him of what he had, maybe?" he said. "Fuel his anger? I mean, his murdered family and Itachi. Those have always been Sasuke's sore points."

"Yeah, I don't really care why he left Sasuke with us," Naruto blurted, bouncing impatiently on his toes. "He's old, right? So probably crazy, whatever. All that matters is that Sasuke is out there, right now, and he can't have gotten very far because he doesn't have a Sakura to heal him."

"He would have had a Sakura to heal him," Kakashi pointed out fairly. "If he would have parked his ass like the rest of us."

"Would is such a strong word," Sakura muttered to the wall. "He _might_ have had a Sakura to heal him. He also _might_ have had a Sakura to punch his face in. Fifty fifty."

_Please. Please make babies with her._

Naruto pressed his hands over his eyes.

"Not real," Kakashi reminded him, not unkindly. "And you need to keep it together. Because if we're hearing things, then that means that Sasuke is too. And how do you think he's going to react to the voice of his dead mother inside his mind? Or that sweet little sister that he never got to meet?"

"Oh. Oh, shit. The crazy…it must be _everywhere_. Hey Sakura, how's that wall coming?"

"Done," Sakura said. "Kakashi-sensei, your turn."

As Kakashi began to weave the seals that would reveal their letter only to Leaf ninja who knew what they were looking for, Sakura came to stand by Naruto's side.

"Sasuke's hearing voices," Naruto announced.

"Oh, again?"

"Yeah, I know." Naruto paused for a moment. "Hey Sakura? Who are you hearing? What voice did you bring with you?"

"I didn't bring a voice with me, Naruto. My mind is quiet."

"What? Mah, Sakura, no fair! How come you don't have a voice?"

Sakura shrugged. Her green eyes were sharp like glass.

"I knew it wasn't real, almost from the beginning," she reminded him. "Made it hard to get attached. All of the people I cared about I carried through the genjutsu with me."

And Naruto closed his eyes, because suddenly Sakura's voice was crowding in alongside his mother's, hurting and somehow swollen.

_That's okay. Really, it was, Sensei, because I'm always on the outside aren't I, just a little bit?_

….

They didn't stop to sleep that night. Because Sasuke sure as shit wasn't sleeping, was actually probably busy spreading his crazy already, and they had to catch up if they wanted to contain it. And it was good, because the bite of tree bark beneath Naruto's hands and feet made him feel like he was going somewhere, like he was _working toward_ something.

But running didn't leave much room for talking, which meant there was nothing to distract Naruto from the chatter inside his skull.

_Look at you, all athletic and shit. Remember that time in fifth grade when you tripped over your own shoelaces and face-planted right into your teacher's cleavage at your Elementary graduation? Just. Moments like those. The reason you were worth fifteen hours of labor._

Naruto squeezed his eyes shut. Because he _did_ remember it. Remembered falling back out of his teacher's rather ample chest to the sound of his mother bruising her own kidneys with laughter, and snapping pictures like a madwoman through eyes that streamed with mirth, while his father face-palmed in the background. His mom had hung a copy of one of the pictures on the fridge, in a hand-made frame that read 'Baby's First Fuck-Up' and had refused to let Naruto take it down

The memory felt…shimmery. Thin and shiny and slippery like that dress that Sakura had worn that one time. But it felt real, too, layered over his memories of ninja training and lonely apartments like frosting between cake pieces.

A distraction, Kakashi-Sensei had said. Something meant to throw him off his game. He should ignore it, shove it down deep like he did with the fox.

But if he focused, like really went squinty-eyed and shit, he could still smell his mother's perfume. Sharp and clean and sweet like oranges. And he could pretend it was the wind ripping tears into his eyes all he wanted, but he was betting there was a reason Kakashi-Sensei was politely ignoring him.

He didn't _want_ to wish his mother's voice away. Holding on to fake memories probably wasn't the healthiest of life decisions, true, but it was also all he was ever going to get of her. He knew things about his father, now that the secret had been spilled. Could find his father in the pages of history books, or the back of the Hokage's quarters where Granny Tsunade totally pretended she couldn't see him hiding sometimes. There were pictures he could trace, actual pieces of clothing he could touch, in order to feel close.

He had nothing of his mother, except for stories passed down second-hand.

_I loved you there. I'm sure I did. Baby boy, how could I not?_

Naruto wasn't ashamed of his tears, had never been ashamed of crying. He wasn't Sasuke, who viewed every visible emotion as some sort of invitation toward a kidney punch. He damn well had a right to cry over his mother's memory. She'd been a wish in the back of his head, a constant ache from the moment his mandatory caretaker had abandoned him at his first solo apartment, him six years old and her running out the door like she couldn't get away from him fast enough.

There had been a thunderstorm that night. A big bitch of a storm, with screaming wind and thunder that shook the roof. And he'd cried then too, because no one had come to comfort him, to shush away his fears. He'd clung to a pillow instead, a pillow that smelled stale and unfamiliar, and pretended it was arms around him.

_I'd have clawed her eyes out. For serious. I'd have introduced her face to my fist for even thinking about leaving you alone._

He had that now, sure. People who were protective of him. Sakura bitch-slapped anyone who spoke about him badly because only she had that right, and Iruka had once gone rage-monster on a group of his students who had recoiled from him when he'd shown up to visit. Kakashi-Sensei had once kicked a Jounin's ass for referring to Naruto as 'that monster', and for all that Jiraya gave him a hard time, he sure as shit didn't tolerate anyone bad-mouthing his student.

But for years. For years and years, people had pushed Naruto away. Had crossed away from the streets he'd been walking on, and refused to sell him things in the market place. Had paled with fear at his presence, and pulled their children away from him at the playground. Like a six-year-old who couldn't even brush his hair properly was capable of some serious shit.

He had overcome it. Had pushed and shoved until people fell away, one by one. Had rebuilt his own reputation out of sweat and what Kakashi called 'a truly charming way of fucking with everyone's expectations'. He could smile now, and mean it, not like the bitter, broke things he used to offer instead. And he would overcome this, too. Would find a way to continue forward, even with the knowledge of what he could have had beating away inside his skull.

But knowing that? Didn't stop what he now recognized as anger snapping away inside his blood.

And the fox was purring beneath his skin, running his anger between its paws like a swatch of silk. And he could feel it, his nails sharpening into claws, his vision going bright and clear, which meant that his eyes were changing-

_TWHACK._

Tree branch to the face.

Naruto squawked and fell, with absolutely zero grace, out of the tree he'd just landed on.

"What the _hell_?" he snapped, because Kakashi-Sensei was already on the ground, leaning against the tree and looking way, _way_ too innocent.

"Knock it off," Kakashi said pleasantly, with a happy-eyed smile that hid secret sad feelings. "I could feel you angsting from four trees away. Sasuke-levels of angst."

Naruto gaped at him.

"I…fuck you!" he said. "I wasn't…I just…"

"Naruto," Sakura said, as she landed lightly beside him. "Naruto, we could see you changing. The fox taking control."

Naruto shook his head.

"It wasn't like that," he said. "He wasn't…coming out. I was just…"

"Throwing yourself a pity party?" Kakashi suggested, examining his fingernails like they were far more fascinating than his furious student.

"I'm _angry_ ," Naruto snapped. "It's _allowed_."

"Not for you. Not like that."

Naruto snarled. Sakura quickly stepped forward, shielding Kakashi from sight.

"You have to understand," she said. "We're not telling you that you can't be upset, Naruto. We're not. But you…you just need more control, that's all."

"So, what? I'm supposed to be okay with knowing now what a normal childhood would have felt like? What it would have meant to have two parents who loved me, instead of an entire village running away from my fucking face?"

"No. No, of course not. But Naruto, you've always been able to get above it before. Always been able to love the village, in spite of everything."

"I know that, Sakura. Doesn't mean that I'm a superhuman with zero bad feelings. Doesn't mean that I don't _get_ to have them, what the fuck. I just have to…I have to go through the bad to find the good."

"Okay," Sakura said, and she knelt down beside him. "Okay, that's good. That's actually _more_ impressive, you have no idea. But Naruto…you can't. Let it control you. Not right now, not with the fox so close."

"I'm angry, Sakura," he said, softly this time, like it was a secret. "Because she's there."

"It's a distraction," Sakura said. "An echo, we already told you. It will fade."

"I know. That's why. Because it's the most I've ever had, and soon I won't have it anymore."

"So, so terrible at genjutsu," Kakashi said over Sakura's shoulder, but it was gentle now. "You had to know, Naruto. That someone would figure it out eventually. Family is a weakness for you. You think they didn't plan this, your frustration?"

"I know they did," Naruto said helplessly. "I know, but I still can't…"

"So don't be angry," Sakura said. "Be grateful that you had her at all. Go through the bad, like you said. Go through the anger, and find grateful instead. You had her voice, Naruto. If this hadn't happened, you might never have had even that. So find grateful."

_She's right, baby boy. I'm here. I love you. That's what you always wanted, right? So, you heard it. Hold on to that echo. But put me away now._

"I…" and there were the tears again. Thank shit that this was his team, and they'd seen his tears before. "Okay, Sakura. Okay."

"Come on," Kakashi said, and he was closer now, dropping a warm hand on Naruto's shoulder. "We've got someone else to find."

_You're not alone without me here, sweetheart. Not like before. So put me away._

Naruto laughed a little, scrubbed at his nose with his sleeve. He let Sakura tug him to his feet, and only wobbled a little bit.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, alright. Emo Bastard Retrieval, Part Two."

"This is not Part Two," Sakura said mournfully. "This is Part…I don't know, Forty-Seven or something. Because this is like one of those really horrible epics that is _never going to end_."

"Aw, there's that adorable optimism," Kakashi said, and then launched himself back into the higher branches.

Naruto followed.

And this time, he kept one echo for himself. Just one, tucked warm against his heart.

The rest, he pushed away. Gently, but still he pushed until his head was as quiet as the trees around them.


	6. Reload

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings: a visible panic attack that leads to physical injury and getting ill, the forcible (but temporary) binding of Sasuke's chakra, and canon-compliant descriptions of Sasuke's past (along with the added sister storyline).

_Sasuke_

He knew better than to think that running would make the voice inside his skull disappear. He wasn't an idiot, he wasn't _Naruto_. Genjutsu had been his family's talent, and he recognized an echo when he heard it.

But, Naruto had also once scrunched his eyes at him when they were twelve and said with great wonder, "Wow Sasuke, emotions make you crazy-baskets, huh?" and Sasuke would never, ever, _ever_ admit it out loud, but he hadn't been wrong.

_Brother? Why are you running?_

Sasuke gritted his teeth, tried to push the voice away. But a sound still leaked from between his clenched jaw, something high-pitched and broken and _unacceptable_.

_You're hurt. You're bleeding. You're scaring me, Brother, please stop._

He was hurt. Everything ached and screamed at him to stop running, to sit and rest. His bones felt broken, his skull felt thick and crowded, and his fingers and feet were clumsy. Sasuke was never clumsy, always in control. But he still tripped, got tangled, and it made the snarl of anger and confusion and pain even blacker inside his head.

"Not real," he panted, and hated that he had to remind himself. "Not real, not real."

_That's mean. Mommy says I was real in both worlds. You just didn't know it there._

Sasuke stumbled, came to a stop. He rested his forehead against damp tree bark and forced himself to breathe, because it was a distraction, it had to be. He would have known if his mother had been pregnant before the massacre.

But then, would anyone have told him? If the pregnancy was new, and Sasuke had been eight and terrified and so terribly breakable after. And his mother, she'd used to cup his face in her hands and laugh and say that she loved her boys but she liked pretty dresses too.

Itachi would have known, Sasuke thought, and fought down the bile at the back of his throat through sheer force of will. He couldn't ask Itachi, would never know the answer now. Itachi was dead, Sasuke had killed him, and he had to keep going now because he was one-hundred percent sure that there was a blonde idiot chasing him through the trees.

Sasuke rubbed his face against the tree trunk, and it felt like fingers against his forehead. And for a second, just a second, he couldn't tell if the imaginary fingers were Itachi's, or something smaller and so much more fragile.

_I wish I could meet him. Bigger Brother. He would have loved me too._

Sasuke gagged, and emptied his stomach over the side of the tree. He'd been fighting it since the cave, since he woke up with new memories; memories that made his actual life seem like a nightmare world, and Misami's voice inside his head.

He retched and retched and slumped against the tree, the bark biting into his skin. It hadn't been smart, maybe, to leave before Sakura healed him. He was pretty sure he could have talked her into it, preyed on recently rekindled affection. Sakura had always buckled under his attention.

But, then. Her eyes inside the genjutsu had been flat and green and calm. Her voice, as she'd refused to apologize, had been firm. A fresh wave of discomfort and confusion rolled his stomach as Sasuke admitted that he'd recognized very little of the Sakura he'd known in the Sakura he'd seen inside the genjutsu.

To his left, still a good distance into the trees, Sasuke heard a loud crash, and Naruto's voice bellowing through the leaves.

"I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR YOUR SHIT, SASUKE!"

"How are you a fucking _ninja_?" Sasuke rasped to his tree branch, because the question really needed to be asked.

He rocked himself back to his feet. It took time, far too much time. He made it a mile, maybe two, further into the trees before his body failed him once again. His knees and elbows cracked against the trunk, and the taste of blood filled his mouth.

_But I like him, Sasuke. The loud one. He has hair like sunshine. Let him help you?_

"Stop."

Once upon a time, shoving the echo away would have been easy. Twelve year old Sasuke wouldn't have had time for it, would have severed it clean and simple and merciless. But sixteen year old Sasuke was alone and without his brother. And the echo was filling his head with soft voices and the smell of his mother's perfume and it was so hard to fight against that much _want_.

Pain lanced through his head like his katana, and Sasuke felt himself fall, losing his grip on the tree. The impact with the ground beneath him jarred his already aching bones, forced a small sound from between his teeth. His arm snapped underneath the weight of his body, went limp and useless.

His vision went fuzzy and out of focus. He was pretty sure he'd be throwing up again if his stomach wasn't empty. But he gritted his teeth and tried to drag himself out of the clearing he'd landed in with his one good arm. And it was hard, it was so hard, because there was still a part of his head (a part that sounded like Misami) that recognized the approaching noise as _friend_ and didn't understand why he had to get away.

"Yeah, okay, this is where I have an actual problem," Naruto announced, crashing next to him on the forest floor. "Literal crawling to get away from us, what the fuck Sasuke, we were never _that bad_."

"Go away," Sasuke hissed, and then winced and snapped, "Shut up," because Misami was crying, she was crying so soft and sad. "Stop, I'm sorry, please stop."

"Wow," Naruto said, and knelt down by Sasuke's side. "Just what we expected, then. SAKURA! KAKASHI-SENSEI! HURRY UP, SASUKE'S GETTING HIS CRAZY EVERYWHERE!"

"I hate you."

"Nope!" Naruto said cheerfully. "I totally reject that sentence. Witness me and my rejection of it."

"Stop," Sasuke's bones were on fire, his head was one loud scream. He felt weak and wrecked and he _hated_ it, wanted to scream until his throat was raw. "Stop following me, we're not friends."

"I reject that, too!" Naruto sang out, and Sasuke's good hand clenched into a useless fist.

Inside his head, Misami continued to sob. Helpless, frightened tears, like her world was ending with Sasuke's pain. Sasuke felt answering tears burn his throat, felt his breathing get short and fast.

"Hey." Naruto's hand was suddenly there, dragging Sasuke's head up. He crouched even lower, until he and Sasuke were eye to eye. "Come on, Bastard. It's not real."

"I know that," Sasuke said through gritted teeth. "Fucking _idiot_ , I know that, let me _go_."

"I get that you know," Naruto said, unbothered by the venom in Sasuke's voice. "Trust me, Bastard, you spent all of our Team 7 years smug and superior and sparkling on the inside because you rocked Genjutsu and I didn't. Stop glaring at me like that, Sasuke, you totally sparkled, don't lie to yourself, we all saw it." Naruto's eyes were so blue and so _sorry_ and Sasuke really was going to scream. "But you're so good at it, Bastard, nobody's been able to Genjutsu you since…" Sasuke watched him choke on the name, stumble. "So, I think you forgot, maybe. How hard it is to sparkle."

"I don't _sparkle_."

"Emo sparkles," Naruto assured him. "Manly, I promise."

"Oh my _God_ , Naruto," Sakura said, landing lightly beside him. "He's going to bite you. Really hard, and I'm not going to blame him."

"Sakura," Naruto said. "You've got to fix him. So that I can kick his ass all over again once we get back to the Village."

"Can't fix him here," Kakashi said from Sakura's other side. Sasuke had seen him land, but not heard it. Which meant he'd improved from childhood, but obviously not enough. "Sorry Sasuke, but you'll run the second your legs are back in working order."

"Hurts," Sasuke said, and looked to Sakura. But she just leveled him with an unimpressed eyebrow cock.

"Ha!" Naruto said. "Nope." He scratched his fingers through Sasuke's hair, weirdly comforting, and then tucked his hands under Sasuke's arms. "Come on, Bastard. Let's get you secure so Sakura can heal your shit."

Sasuke didn't want any of it. Didn't want Naruto's careful hands and wide smiles.

"Get _off_ ," he snapped, and shoved Naruto with his good arm.

Naruto dropped him with a surprised yelp. Sasuke hit the ground on his crooked arm, and everything burst red and yellow behind his eyes. His vision whited out, and the last thing he heard before it faded to black was Misami, sobbing and sobbing in his ear.

….

He woke up weak. Sick and sore and like someone had just stuck an ice cream scoop in his stomach and pulled out the most important part of him. Like they'd left a hole behind, gaping and ragged and raw.

He was still bound, thick ropes wrapping around his wrists and ankles. That was a compliment, probably. But even he could feel how unnecessary it was now.

"We bound your chakra," Sakura said quietly. They were in another clearing, a different one. She was kneeling by his side. A little ways away, Kakashi was reclining against a tree. "We used pressure points. It's temporary."

"But effective," Kakashi added from his tree.

Sasuke curled his fists and tried his hardest to pretend that missing his chakra didn't make him shake. Didn't make him feel like a hollowed out shell of nothing.

"Where's Naruto?" he asked quietly.

"Getting firewood." Kakashi cocked his head, like he was listening and Sasuke couldn't hear it, wanted to scream to fill the sudden silence of his chakra. "Or possibly fighting a bear. It's hard to tell, he makes so much noise."

"Worst ninja," Sakura agreed, but it was fond instead of frustrated.

"Is this…is there a point to this?"

" _This_ is your shovel talk," Kakashi said cheerfully.

Sakura rolled her eyes. Sasuke felt his brow furrow.

"Sensei, he doesn't know what that is," Sakura said, long-suffering.

"Of course he doesn't," Kakashi agreed, just as cheerful. "That would require Sasuke to care about sticky things like dating and romance and other actual members of the human species."

Sasuke eased himself upward. He didn't get very far; his muscles bent and wobbled like weak blades of grass. One arm moved stiff and uncomfortable and he realized that it was trapped within a splint.

Sakura caught him with soft hands and helped him struggle into a sitting position. Sasuke felt his cheeks burn with shame and refused to meet her eyes.

"Naruto is our most precious sunbeam," Kakashi continued. "You knew that before you left the village. There are a lot of rainbows in his world, and sparkly bits of glitter, and what I suspect are deep and abiding fantasies of the four of us crying our pain into each other's shoulders and then going to get ramen."

Sakura snorted.

"And because Naruto is a sunbeam, Sakura and I have let him have his little snowflake daydreams. But we're not sunbeams. And neither are you, Sasuke. So I think we need to reach an understanding about what is going to happen once Naruto drags you back through the village gates."

Sasuke turned his face away. Refused to answer.

"Let me be very clear," Kakashi said, and Sasuke gritted his teeth and felt like he was twelve and _hated it_. "You are a criminal. You betrayed the Leaf Village and defected to join with the man who killed the Third Hokage. For years you worked in opposition to Leaf Village interests. And that won't change just because Naruto manages to get you back inside the walls."

"Naruto doesn't understand the ramifications," Sakura said, very softly. "To him, it's very simple. Because he's already forgiven you. But there are others who haven't forgotten," Sakura's eyes are cold, so cold, that they deliver a quick one-two punch of surprise to Sasuke's gut, "that you punched a hand through his heart and left him for dead."

"You're not going to get the chance to hurt him again," Kakashi finished. "Is the general idea. Hope you picked up on that."

It was crystal clear. At some point during his absence, Sakura and Kakashi had closed ranks around the idiot because his naiveté was painfully obvious. It was understandable. But Sasuke still wasn't going to answer.

"I may have started a forest fire," Naruto announced, stamping his way back into the clearing with feet so loud even Sasuke's deadened senses could hear him. "I mean, I totally didn't. But hypothetically that's a thing you should be aware of."

"How," Sakura said. It wasn't a question.

"Well, there was this squirrel," Naruto said, and then ducked when Sakura threw a kunai at his head. "Judgment, so much judgment, see if I tell you the rest of _that_ story. Hey, Sasuke!"

Naruto dropped the firewood in a loud clattering pile in the middle of the clearing (birds were startled out of trees overhead and Kakashi closed his eyes like maybe he couldn't believe his life) and bounded in Sasuke's direction.

"Hey, you're awake! How are you feeling? Not murderous?"

"Don't," Sasuke snapped, and hated that his jerk away felt sloppy, slow.

"Moderately murderous," Naruto amended. "Murderous with a side of emotional baggage. C'mon Sasuke. At least your head is clear!"

Sasuke blinked wide, realized that in the ringing silence of his chakra stores Misami's voice was missing too.

"Disabling your chakra disrupted the genjutsu echo," Sakura said quietly. He hadn't asked, wouldn't ask, but she'd answered anyway. And Sasuke didn't know _how_ to mourn that, didn't even know if he should.

"Sorry about your chakra," Naruto said, eyes wide and earnest. "I mean, no not really because you're kind of a raging dickbag with it. But sorry because now I have to wait for those dickbag powers to come back before I can beat your face in."

Sasuke gritted his teeth.

"A bro beating," Naruto assured him. "Totally different than a normal beating."

"I'm going to build a fire," Kakashi announced. "And then stick my face in it, maybe."

"Sensei, that's a horrible idea," Naruto said with a frown. "I mean, where are you going to find a mask that covers your whole face?"

This time, Sakura launched half of her weapons pouch at Naruto's head.

Sasuke sat very still and very quiet and tried not to feel to the warmth and the laughter next to him.

….

"I'm not stupid, you know," Naruto said, much later and in much softer a voice.

The fire was banked, barely glowing embers. Kakashi and Sakura were sprawled out on the edge of the clearing, because Naruto had first watch (although Sasuke suspected that Kakashi had actually tucked his book up underneath his mask and was reading with his eyes covered). Naruto was spread out at Sasuke's side, taking up an obnoxious amount of space, arms folded behind his head.

Sasuke silently considered his statement.

"Put your eyebrows back down," Naruto said. "I can't see them, but I can _feel_ them mocking me, I swear."

Sasuke smoothed his forehead back out. He shouldn't be responding, should be cold and blank and stone-faced like he was before Itachi, but the situation felt so familiar and his reactions almost instinctive. Especially without his chakra to whisper power and possibility beneath his skin.

"I'm not stupid," Naruto repeated. "I know what you and Sakura and Sensei were talking about when you sent me off into the woods. They think that I don't get it. That there's going to be bad stuff when we get you back. I _know_ it's going to be bad; you were way more of a dumbass than usual and Granny Tsunade's maybe going to throw her pig at your head."

"I don't care."

"Yeah, you do," Naruto countered easily. "Granny Tsunade's bitching crazy. And it's going to be bad, probably for a while. But it won't be forever, either."

Sasuke made a noise. Soft and disgusted.

"It won't," Naruto said. "Everyone will be really pissed and they'll ignore you and Lee might try to duel you for Sakura's honor or something, but that'll fade. Once you _stay_ , Sasuke, it'll stop. And then one day I'll be sitting at the Hokage's desk, and you'll be standing behind it. My best guard. And no one will even be worried because they'll know you have my back."

"You are stupid if you think that anyone wants that but you."

"Oh, why?" Naruto scratched lazily at his upper arm. "Because Sakura and Kakashi-Sensei said mean and scary things while I was off totally _not_ teaching squirrels how to use fire jutsu?"

Across the clearing, Sakura made a noise like a dying gazelle into her sleeping bag.

"You know that Sakura kicked Neji's ass for saying that you weren't coming back?" Naruto said. "And not, like, years ago, this was two weeks ago, tops. And not in the way that everyone kinda wants to kick Neji's ass, this was a special ass kicking. And she still has our team picture; it's up on the wall in her bedroom."

Sasuke closed his eyes.

"And Kakashi-Sensei, he stops by the Uchiha compound like once a week. I guess the Council-Bastards wanted to rip it down? To clear out the compound and fill it with something else. But Granny Tsunade said that Kakashi-Sensei showed up while they were voting and _smiled them into submission_ , or some shit. And now Sensei visits once a week, to keep candles burning for your family. And he lit one for Itachi, too, after we heard."

"Kakashi hated Itachi," Sasuke said, because he couldn't help it, because it was either that or scream.

Naruto snorted and kicked his ankle.

"He didn't light it for himself, dumbass." Naruto yawned, wide and loud. "And he cleans, too. Makes sure that the house you were staying in is dust-free and shit." Naruto paused, hummed a bit at the stars. "I'm not actually supposed to know that, I think."

It was Kakashi's turn to make dying animal noises across the clearing.

"So, they say mean things," Naruto continued. "They're allowed. I mean, you've been a total dick. But Sasuke? They're still here, trying to bring you home."

"You're pathetic," Sasuke said, quiet and controlled, because his control was all he had left. "We're not twelve years old anymore. This isn't some ridiculous competition about who can climb a tree faster. That boy is dead, and you don't know who I am now."

Naruto kicked his toes at the sky for a bit.

"I don't want twelve year old Sasuke," he finally said. "Twelve year old Sasuke was still a dick, and actually kind of way crazier than you are now. I want the you-shaped Sasuke. The Sasuke who laughed inside the genjutsu and wrestled with me because he was shit at board games and always an asshole about losing."

"That Sasuke never even _existed_ ," Sasuke said and breathed deep to banish soft voices and warm smells and feeling so light, like his worries hadn't been that important.

"Sure he does," Naruto said. "That Sasuke is sitting right next to me. I mean, he's buried under way too many layers of angst-bitchery and family issues that I'm not even going to try and magic out of you. But he's there. And he's _still_ a dick about losing at board games, by the way."

Sasuke rolled onto his side, carefully avoiding his cast. Naruto nattered on, because audience participation was never actually a thing he considered important to a conversation.

"You could laugh there because you weren't sad anymore. And you wanted to stay, Sasuke, I know you did. You wanted to stay with us, and you didn't want to forget when we had to leave." Naruto's hands were spinning as he spoke, because he was incapable of being still. "And I know you're just really, really pissed about everything. _Everything_ , Sasuke, your hate-fire is kind of terrifying. But you're…you're different. After Itachi. You're not as dead behind the eyes as you were when we saw you with Orochimaru."

Sasuke was not going to relive that. Itachi's voice and his fingers on his forehead and the warmth in his eyes as he smiled and apologized for finally buckling. He was too weak, too wrecked right now and he was _not_ going to relive it.

"I did what I had to do. That's all."

Naruto's snort was incredulous.

"Yeah, by joining you dead brother's evil ninja boy band? Exactly what you had to do, sure. And Sakura, I know you're awake and I know what a boy band is and I _blame you_."

Sasuke stayed very still. Because Naruto's words, the words 'dead brother' reverberated through his bones like a thunderclap.

"Shit," Naruto shuffled closer, ignored how Sasuke's stiff shoulders radiated _GO AWAY AND ALSO GO FUCK YOURSELF_ pretty clearly. "Shit, I didn't mean that. Just. You make really bad decisions, you know that right? Like, your crown in bad decision making is unchallenged and will reign victorious forever and ever."

"Then why do you want me back so badly," Sasuke said and he hated it but the question was there.

"Because of the big, bastard-sized hole in my life," Naruto said. "I mean, it's cool. You can make bad decisions and I'll just egg you on or make shit worse or something and then Kakashi can show up and make his happy murder eyebrows at us and then Sakura can come and save the day. And it will be fine. And I'm never going to stop believing that."

"I didn't want to stay."

"Sure you did," Naruto said. "Your family was there. Of course you wanted to stay, Sasuke, that's all right."

"I'm not coming back. Not to the village."

"You are," Naruto said softly. "You always were going to, eventually. Because I was never going to stop chasing your idiot-ass. Across the entire Ninja nation if I have to, Sasuke, we'll be one of the fairy tales? The two ninja who ran forever; one forward and one away. Children will read about us in school and cry ugly tears."

"Stop talking," Sasuke said, and for once, Naruto listened.

He stayed quiet, but he stayed _there_ , as Sasuke closed his eyes and shook and shook against the grass.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings: Team 7 having a fight that drags almost every single one of their traumas out into the open, and not in a nice way with nice words. Plus, an in-depth look at Sasuke's mental state.

_Kakashi_

They were quiet, his kids.

They never used to be.

Sakura had been shrill and Naruto never actually closed his mouth (Kakashi had studied this, there were notebooks, endless notebooks, with research notes and hypotheses and doodles of Naruto's face with the words _What the fuck_ written underneath in bright purple ink) and Sasuke, even Sasuke had taken the time to snark his superiority to the world.

But now. They were quiet. Well. Comparatively, in Naruto's case. The kid still spoke like he was afraid someone might snatch that away from him, too. But after he'd returned from his years with Jiraya, he'd stayed quiet for so long (three minutes, it had been three minutes, but in Naruto time that was like half a billion centuries of silence) that Kakashi had actually spun around and sputtered things like _what's wrong_ and _was there a zombie, are zombie bites a thing_ and _your voice is the anchor that I use to ignore all things, can't quit on me now_.

The Hokage had laughed so hard she'd fallen out of her fancy Hokage chair. It had not been Kakashi's proudest moment.

But Naruto was quiet now, his mouth closed and pursed with concern. And Sakura never screamed, not anymore, not unless it was directed at an enemy and filled with rage. And Sasuke.

Sasuke's silence went deeper now than stoicism. Edged past depression and displayed broken in the black of his eyes. He'd only spoken once since sunrise. Only once, and as the sun crept closer and closer to setting in the West, Naruto's mouth curled tighter, Sakura's quiet became a little less serene.

"If you ask about my brother, I will kill you when my chakra unbinds."

Kakashi sighed and leaned against the wall of the brand new cave they'd found to camp in overnight (with Sasuke's chakra bound, he couldn't travel as far or as fast as the rest of them). He gently shoved away the laughter in his head that sounded like Obito, because Naruto was going to ask. He hadn't yet, and his whiskered face was a truly hilarious caricature of painful restraint, but of course he was going to. Naruto lived to poke into places where he wasn't wanted.

He made it all the way through an awkward dinner of field rations and some edible roots Sakura had found. An awkward dinner in which Sakura made a truly heroic attempt at conversation, Sasuke pretended everyone around him didn't actually exist, Naruto alternated between squirming and clawing at the dirt, and Kakashi outwardly eye-smiled and inwardly calculated the odds of the Hokage asking him to slit Sasuke's neck once they brought him to her office.

"I can't," Naruto finally bellowed and Sakura rolled her eyes upward like maybe she could find the answer to her teammate's stupidity on the ceiling. "Your emotional pain is suffocating. It is _actually trying to force its way down my throat and choke me, Sasuke_."

Sasuke's eyes were empty, so empty that they sent chills down even Kakashi's spine. But the tiny quirk of his eyebrow suggested that he would very much appreciate if Naruto would actually suffocate, please and thank you.

"Talk to us," Naruto demanded, because he would be the one to insist. Sakura would wait in silence until Sasuke felt like sharing and Kakashi would never actually expect him to speak but Naruto would pull it out of him with his fingernails if he had to. "Tell us what you're thinking. Tell us about your brother."

Sasuke said nothing. But the tiny, blade-sharp smile that curved his lips had Naruto jerking back a little in alarm.

It was the kind of smile you found on a corpse. The kind of smile that everyone wore beneath their skin because skeletons had smiles fixed and frozen on their bony faces. Naruto recoiled from it and Sakura looked sick to see it but Kakashi just tilted his head because he'd seen that smile on his own face before, safely hidden beneath his mask.

He wondered sometimes, also behind the mask where no one could see, if Naruto understood just how similar he was to Sasuke. If Naruto knew that he was actually running after both of them; Sasuke was just more obvious about it.

But, then. Sasuke always had been just a little bit desperate for attention. Naruto wasn't wrong about those shirts and the neck cleavage.

"Sasuke," Naruto said. "Come on. You talked to us there, in the genjutsu, you said that you didn't want to forget-,"

"You want to remember?" Sasuke said and Kakashi went very still because his voice was too sweet, his smile still too sharp. "No, you're right Naruto, let's remember. Let's talk about your parents."

Naruto shuddered like a door forcibly slammed.

It was too soon. Kushina's voice couldn't be completely gone yet. Shadowed, maybe and pushed away because Naruto had practice with shutting out unwanted voices (and not just the Fox but an entire Village full of hateful whispers). But the memory of it would still be so clear and Naruto was a hero, even Sasuke couldn't argue that, but this genjutsu had been designed to hit him in his weakest spot.

And hero or not, ninja or not, Naruto was still just a fifteen year old boy in the end. One who'd grown up sad and terribly lonely.

"I don't want to talk about me," Naruto said, and tried for a grin. It was a weak and wobbling thing, a piss-poor shadow of his usual sunbeam smile. "For once, one time only offer, so jump that shit while you can, yes?"

"No," Sasuke said, still so _pleasant_ , still so _polite_. Kakashi felt his skin crawl and was almost proud. "No, let's talk about you. I'm you _friend_ , aren't I? That's what you've always said. So why don't you open up to your friend, Naruto, and tell me all about how it was to have a mommy and daddy for once."

Sakura's face went tight and pale and furious. She moved like maybe she was going to do something, shut Sasuke up. Kakashi stopped her with a gentle hand around her wrist.

She gave him a look, sharp as broken glass. I don't understand, that look said and Kakashi shrugged because she never really had.

"Why do you care?" Naruto asked, hurt and honestly baffled. "About my feelings? Because yours are really loud, Sasuke. They're always really loud, even though you never actually talk about them. It's all about your eyebrows. Your eyebrows express angst better than anything."

"But you have feelings," Sasuke said.

"Well, sure," Naruto agreed, still so confused. "But we never talk about mine."

Next to him, Sakura winced. Kakashi felt Naruto's words all the way down to his bones. The boy was always careless with honesty that should have been a big deal.

"Today I do," Sasuke said. "Tell me about her hugs, Naruto. Your mom gave great hugs. Can you still feel them, is that a part of the echo? Or is it just her voice, getting quieter and quieter? Leaving you all over again?"

Naruto stared, face curiously blank. Sasuke's smile never wavered.

"Don't," Sakura said, shaking off Kakashi's restraining fingers. "Leave him alone, Sasuke."

"You don't get to participate in this conversation, I think," Sasuke said without turning away from Naruto. It was deliberate, Kakashi knew, because Sakura had spent so much time making sure she was a person worth noticing. "You didn't carry anything out of the genjutsu, right? I can see it, in the way your eyes never go distant like you're listening to someone else. Keep your perfect little life out of this discussion, Sakura. Only people who have experienced loss allowed."

"I know loss," Sakura whispered and Sasuke's smile stretched a little. But he still wouldn't look at her, refused her that regard.

"I don't count," he said. "How long did you know me? Really know _me_ , Sakura, and not the schoolgirl crush you invented. A few months, maybe. I was hardly even a real person to you; you don't get to mourn my absence."

As Kakashi snuck his fingers around Sakura's wrist once again (she was shaking) he realized that this was not going to be typical Team Seven scene (in which Naruto yelled and Sasuke was silently scathing and Sakura was determined and he watched and waited for an opportunity). This was Sasuke fighting back, as best he could with his chakra bound. This was him using words to hit the soft and vulnerable places that he usually targeted with fists and fire.

And that meant that Kakashi needed to brace himself because this was going to be like releasing a river with nothing to stop the flood.

"Poor little Sakura, with parents to love her and perfect grades in school and a spot on the strongest team in the Leaf Village. You can sit and talk about struggle in a room with people like us?"

"Shut up, Sasuke," Naruto said, because he would always defend her, always. "Not everyone needs to have a fucked up life like you or me to be a great ninja. It's okay that Sakura has nice things."

"Has she ever shared those nice things with you, Naruto?" Sasuke asked sweetly. "She's your friend, you say. But has she ever invited you over to dinner with her family? Or come to check in on you in that lonely little apartment of yours? Maybe she'll defend you from the others but she's certainly not going to let your fucked up life dirty her stable existence."

Kakashi watched Sakura open her mouth. But then she shut it again and her cheeks flushed red with shame.

"As entertaining a distraction this is," Kakashi said mildly, speaking up for the first time since dinner. Sasuke tensed against the other wall and Kakashi found that strangely gratifying. That Sasuke still reacted to his voice. "I think it's time to get back on topic. Which is your brother, Sasuke. If we're going to talk about fucked up lives, let's start with the most obvious in the room, shall we?"

"Sure that isn't you, Kakashi?" Sasuke asked. "Is the genjutsu echo inside your head an actual voice or just the sound of falling rocks?"

Kakashi smiled with his eyes and ignored the way his stomach rolled. Ignored not only the sound, but the smell of blood and broken skin.

"Why wasn't he there, Sasuke?" Kakashi asked back. "Why wasn't Itachi a part of your family inside the genjutsu?"

Sasuke would never be so obvious as to jerk in confusion or alarm. But the way he went still, so still, was telling enough.

"Hey, that's right," Naruto said, brow furrowed all over again. "Why wasn't he there, Sasuke?"

"I have a theory," Sakura said and her voice was cold. Because Sasuke might have treated her like the girl he knew once but Kakashi and Naruto both knew that she wasn't. "Everything in your life that hurts revolves around your brother, right Sasuke? Every bad and terrible thing can trace its roots back to him. Your family, your time with Orochimaru, and now his blood on your hands. Itachi is everything wrong with your life. So, he didn't have a place in your _perfect little family_ inside the genjutsu."

"You don't know anything," Sasuke said, and all the sugar was gone from his voice. It was empty again.

"Neither do you," Sakura said, with a kind of calm that finally assured Kakashi that he could release her wrist. "Not about me. But it never stopped you from thinking you did."

Sasuke turned to look at her. Finally turned to look. It was a huge thing, a big moment, and even Naruto gave it about fifteen seconds of respectful silence before ruining it with his mouth.

"I know he was your brother," he said earnestly, all but falling over himself to understand Sasuke's pain, to take it away with speeches and maybe some quality hugs. "And that you still loved him. But Sasuke, remember what a dick he was? Your brother was the biggest of dicks. And now that giant dick is no longer in your life. So, from that perspective, it's a happy thing, right?"

Next to him, Kakashi could feel Sakura mouthing the words 'giant dick' with something like disbelief.

"You don't know _anything_ ," Sasuke repeated.

"But Sasuke, the dicks!" Naruto cried. "Giant, evil dick! We never talked about it when we were kids because the stick up your ass was really more of a log at that point, but if we did, I'm sure there would have been a dicks conversation!"

" _Naruto_ ," Sakura hissed.

"I want to hug you but also maybe cry about your stupid," Kakashi added.

"My brother wasn't _evil_ ," Sasuke said, and everything in the cave ground to a screeching halt.

"What?" Naruto asked, eyes impossibly wide. "Sasuke, what?"

Sasuke's face was pale, so pale, like he had never actually meant to say that out loud. Like he couldn't figure out why he had.

"As much as it pains me, deep down in my soul," Kakashi said. "I have to agree with Naruto's giant dick analogy. In which everybody knows that your brother fit the description."

Sasuke's head whipped around again and Kakashi breathed deep. Just because Kakashi never expected Sasuke to talk didn't mean that he didn't know how to make him if the situation called for it.

"Everybody is wrong," Sasuke hissed. "So fucking stupid and wrong. It was orders, it was all orders. Because the Hokage felt threatened by my family's power. And he knew Itachi was loyal, was the most loyal, and would do it if he asked. But he couldn't kill me, could only protect me as best he could." The words were tripping over Sasuke's tongue, spilling out so fast, the result of being bottled up and held back by force. Kakashi's felt something inside his chest go cold and startled, felt Sakura catch her breath next to him. "So he made me hate him, because he knew it would make me strong. And he still protected me, even though I hated him, even though he knew I would kill him in the end. It was all for me, and none of it was his fault."

Naruto's face was white, completely washed of its usual sun-warmed glow. His blue eyes were huge and bruised and horrified.

"Sasuke," he said.

"And now he's gone," Sasuke said and he was shaking hard enough to rattle the ropes around his wrists. "He's gone and I sent him away and I _don't want to talk about it_."

There were tears on Sakura's cheeks. Kakashi knew because one of them dropped onto his hands, cold and wet.

"Sasuke," Naruto repeated and then lunged forward to wrap his hands around Sasuke's wrists, to steady his shakes with his own hands.

"Don't," Sasuke hissed and shoved at Naruto with his shoulders, his feet, and his trapped wrists. Naruto held firm. "I…just…get the _fuck_ off of me."

"He loved you," Naruto whispered. "Sasuke, he loved you so much."

" _Don't_."

But Naruto held on. Naruto would always hold on, and Kakashi thought that Sasuke really should have realized that by now.

He felt something grip his arm and stared down rather dumbly at Sakura's hand.

"It's okay, Kakashi-sensei," she said and he wondered how she knew, just when he had become so transparent to the kids he was supposed to protect.

Sometime after he'd failed them, probably.

"He wasn't there," Sasuke said into the silence. He appeared to have retreated completely back into himself, no longer aware of Naruto's hands. The genjutsu and the stripping of his chakra had weakened him, made him so vulnerable; it almost felt wrong to look at him like this. "He wasn't inside the genjutsu."

"It's okay," Naruto said. "We're here, Sasuke."

It was silent inside the cave after that. Because none of them knew exactly what else to say.

….

Afterward, Kakashi did his job. It was a mockery at this point, because he needed his kids far more than they would ever need him again. But it made him feel like less of a failure to try.

He started with Sakura. She was by the river they'd found, aggressively washing bloodstains out of Sasuke's coat. Her palms were reddened, already stained from the work.

"It's a practical coat," Kakashi remarked. "Hard to tell the difference between bloodstains and those red clouds."

"I can get them out," she said.

"And whose blood are you so focused on washing away?"

Sakura closed her eyes.

"He said terrible things," she said, after a while. "He always says terrible things."

"Yes."

"But that doesn't make them wrong. More right than we want to hear, maybe."

"Do you want any help? With the coat?"

Sakura shook her head.

"I can do it," she insisted. "It won't hurt me to get a little blood on my hands for once."

"Nothing wrong with cleaner hands, Sakura."

She smiled at him over her shoulder. It was not a pleasant smile.

"I think maybe there is, on this team." She turned her attention back to the coat. "I'm okay, Kakashi-sensei. Really."

"Okay," he said.

But he sat for a little while as she washed. And she kept going because she knew he would never say anything about the tears she rolled into the river.

….

He went to Sasuke next. Sasuke, who was alone in the cave. He hadn't been, when Sakura had left, and Kakashi made a mental note that he needed to find Naruto next.

"Go away," Sasuke croaked and tucked himself into the wall.

He looked weak. And wrecked.

Kakashi had no idea how to have this conversation.

"I didn't know," he tried. "About Itachi."

"You hated him more than anyone," Sasuke said lifelessly to the wall.

"True. I lit those candles for you. But I can light them for him now, I guess."

"Why did you light candles at all?" Sasuke asked, and Kakashi forgot sometimes, that they were all just teenagers underneath all the pain and rage and baggage. Still just kids.

"I figured you couldn't. Traveling like you were. But I thought you might have wanted to, if you'd been in one place long enough."

"Oh," Sasuke said, and then went quiet. And Kakashi let him, because what else was there to say?

But he stayed for a while with Sasuke, too. And Sasuke never turned away from the wall, because one heartfelt conversation didn't make a team whole again. But he didn't tell Kakashi to leave, either, and he was going to count that as some kind of progress.

….

He found Naruto up a tree, about a mile from the cave. His legs were dangling over the branch he was sitting on, hanging over one hundred feet of empty air.

Kakashi crouched next to him, spreading his weight across the wood beneath his feet.

"I'm pretty terrible, I think," Naruto announced, almost casually. "For being sad about the wrong things."

"Oh? What are you sad about?"

"I _should_ be sad about Sasuke's brother," he said. "Should be pissed at Granny Tsunade and all those ancient bastards on the Council, maybe. But mostly, Kakashi-sensei, I just keep thinking about how things would be so much better if we'd stayed inside the genjutsu."

"You're allowed an adjustment period, Naruto."

The boy's eyes were amused, almost, when he turned them on Kakashi's face. It was an adult kind of amusement, and Kakashi hated himself for it.

"You're a big fat liar," Naruto said fondly. "That's not what you said earlier."

"Well, you're not currently trying to turn into a fox and rip the forest apart, so."

Naruto laughed.

"It's selfish, right?" he asked, after a while. "To want to be where I was happy, even though Sasuke's brother wasn't there?"

"Only if you try to act on it," Kakashi said. "Selfish would be trying to bring it back. Missing it is human, just human, Naruto. Not bad."

Naruto hummed a little and rested his cheek against the tree trunk.

"I'm still going to drag him home," he said. "Because I made a promise. And I can't give that up even though we really should change our name to Team Fucked Up From Every Angle."

"I know," Kakashi said and didn't say _this is why you're better than the rest of us, not because of your power, but because of this_.

"At least we can be fucked up together," Naruto offered. "Did old man Hokage do that on purpose, Sensei?"

"Slap all the broken ones together?"

Naruto stuck his tongue out and gave Kakashi a little shove.

"We're only broken if we can't fix each other, Sensei," Naruto scolded. "And there's ramen. I have so much ramen planned to heal us, Sensei, you have no idea."

"Touch me again and I'll push you out of this tree," Kakashi said sweetly. 

"Whatever, Sensei, you'd be so lost without me."

Kakashi didn't agree out loud. Didn't say _Wow, you have no idea how true that is, do you?_

But that was okay because his silence said it all anyway.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings: None that I can think of, but if you spot anything, please let me know!

_Sakura_

Everything was awkward.

Save for Naruto's inescapable babbling, Team Seven had never been terribly chatty. But the frigid silence that filled the cave after Sasuke's revelation was as thick as the ice in Snow Country. Everyone stayed in their respective corners and avoided eye contact. Even Naruto, though he was obviously just gearing up his next attempt to love Sasuke's pain away.

"Give this to him," Sakura said, after Naruto had left the cave and returned again. She held out Sasuke's coat, smelling of river water and the sunshine she'd dried it in.

Naruto took the coat and asked, "For swaddling purposes? Bet I could make a bitching Uchiha sushi-roll."

"If you try to make any kind of Uchiha foodstuff, he will actually use your intestines as a scarf to cover up his neck cleavage. And I will not help you. I will compliment his lovely new organ-scarf, Naruto."

Across the cave, Kakashi snorted quietly behind his book.

"Mah," Naruto protested. "Making me the Bastard-Nanny and then insulting me. So mean, Sakura."

"You were going to go outside eventually. You were doing your potty dance in the corner," Sakura explained. "And the fact that I know what your potty dance looks like means you owe me so many more favors than a little babysitting, Naruto, OK?"

"I'll dance for you anytime," Naruto leered.

Sakura punched his knees out from under him.

After he was finished wailing Sakura's cruel injustice into the dirt, Naruto sulked his way back across the cave. Sakura tugged a few kunai out of her pouch to sharpen and watched Naruto approach Sasuke from underneath her lashes.

"Hey," Naruto said, because he was the soul of sensitivity. "Sakura cleaned your coat. So, come out of your Bastard ball a little, yeah?"

From his corner, Kakashi made a sound of actual despair.

Sasuke didn't move. If anything, his spine and shoulders tightened, projecting an even stronger sense of 'Kindly fuck off and die'.

"C'mon, Bastard," Naruto wheedled, crouching down to dangle the coat over Sasuke's head. "At least sit up and insult Sakura's cleaning skills or something. How else are we supposed to know that the Sasuke hate-fire is still burning strong?"

Sakura stared, for a long moment, at the ceiling of their cave.

"Yeah," Naruto said, as if Sasuke had spoken. Maybe he had-after all, Naruto had made an art form out of communicating with the clues in Sasuke's eyebrows and shoulders and facial tics. Naruto spoke fluent Sasuke and even after all these years, Sakura still considered herself barely proficient. Of course, she'd never tell Naruto that he'd surpassed her in any intelligence-related area. He'd scream his victory from the Leaf Village rooftops and then Sakura would be forced to actually murder him and Lady Tsunade would be sad or something.

Naruto added, "Totally understand not wanting to insult Sakura's cleaning. You know I'd feed you your own butt-rope and then Sakura would hurt me and Kakashi-Sensei would lurk in his corner and _disapprove_. Or some shit." Naruto's brow furrowed and he glanced across the cave. "Is that a thing that you do, Sensei? Behind your porn?"

" _Butt-rope_ ," Kakashi repeated flatly, and turned a page.

Naruto turned back to Sasuke with a grin and said, "I'm not allowed to roll you up like a Sasuke-noodle. Sakura said. But here's your coat anyway, Bastard. You look cold."

Sakura watched as Naruto dropped the coat along Sasuke's back, cheerfully ignoring the rigid warning of Sasuke's spine. Despite her instructions against any culinary-based swaddling, Naruto did take the time to tuck the fabric around Sasuke's ribs and shoulders.

"Didn't want to take credit for your cleaning service?" Kakashi asked over her shoulder. "And you got all those pesky bloodstains out, too."

"Stop creeping up on twitchy ninjas, Sensei," Sakura said, without looking away from the boys. "You'll get a kunai to the face someday."

"Not from you. Too polite. Naruto, maybe. If I took his ramen or insulted the color orange or something."

"The cave is cold and I could see him shaking from over here," Sakura said. "But he wouldn't take the coat from me."

"And Sasuke's been trying to stab me in the face for years, no sneakiness needed," Kakashi agreed. "So send the ninja-bulldozer. Practical, Sakura. And it doesn't sting?"

Sakura watched as Naruto finished his fussing. Softly, so softly she almost missed it, she heard Sasuke mutter, "I wasn't cold. Moron."

She smiled a little and said, "Naruto's been throwing himself at Sasuke's special wall of stupid for years, now. Longer than all of us-it wouldn't be right to try and step in front of him now. Naruto will be the one to bring him back, just like he promised, and I can help with what comes after."

Kakashi gave her a warm, crescent-eyed smile and said, "Look at you, all mature and shit."

Sakura leveled her Sensei with a flat look and said, "I believe in Naruto. I owe him that much."

"Don't you give me that look I could ROCK THE BUTT-ROPE IF I WANTED TO, SASUKE," Naruto bellowed across the cave.

Sakura stared at the ceiling for a moment and then put the kunai back in her pouch before she was tempted to toss them at Naruto's head.

They left at first light the next morning, but even then their progress was slow and struggling. Naruto took the lead, rioting his way through the trees, while Sakura took the rear. She kept a careful eye on Sasuke, who was red-faced and ready to explode from embarrassment. And on Kakashi, who was carrying Sasuke on his back and had a tendency to let him get slapped in the face with tree branches when he looked especially bitchy.

Eventually, Sasuke was going to stop caring that his Chakra was bound and try to strangle Kakashi with his hostage-ropes regardless. Sakura had a kunai handy for when it happened-although she might pretend to be interested in the foliage for a bit before intervening because fair was fair and Sasuke had eaten a lot of tree branches today.

But Sakura's grip on the kunai tightened and changed as up ahead, Naruto let out a startled squawk and plummeted off his tree branch.

"Worst ninja," Kakashi said, even as his fingers inched towards his forehead protector.

Something rustled in the trees and Sasuke kicked at Kakashi's hip a little bit.

"Put me down," he demanded.

"You can be like the mermaid on the front of my pirate ship!" Kakashi said back and Sakura could hear Sasuke's teeth grind together all the way across the trees.

They fell into a standard flanking pattern, with Sasuke between them, no matter how much it pissed him off. Sakura scanned the trees for enemies and for Naruto, because it would take more than a forty foot drop to crack that particular skull.

Naruto reached them first, scrambling up Kakashi's tree with leaves in his hair, and gasped, "Wait. Stop. Don't give Sasuke a kunai."

"He's busy," Kakashi said. "He's a mermaid."

Sakura watched Naruto's brain smack into his skull and stutter to a stop.

"I hate all of you," Sasuke hissed, soft and venomous.

"Why are we waiting?" Sakura cut in, because she loved her boys but she'd also seen them banter through _bleeding_ before and they didn't have that time.

"Not an enemy," Naruto said. "Just a dickface who likes to knock me out of trees."

"Still focused on dicks then, Naruto," Sai said, soaring into view on a wave of black ink. "How typical."

Naruto made a strangled hamster noise deep within his throat.

"Did I hear something about a mermaid?" Sai continued, and Sasuke released a dying rodent sound of his own.

"Motherfuck," Sakura sighed.

"The Hokage sent me," Sai explained, after they'd taken themselves out of the trees and back on the ground. "You missed three check-ins, so she sent me after you."

"To help us complete the mission?" Kakashi asked. He'd eased Sasuke off of his back and the boy had immediately staggered away, glaring hatefully at everything in general.

"Lady Tsunade's exact orders were, 'Godamnit Sai, go get your idiot teammates from whatever bit of shiny caught their focus. The other Kage already informed me that twelve inter-country incidents linked to one team in a single year is an unacceptable amount, no matter how much the blonde one reminds them of a woodland creature'."

"Woodland creature," Naruto repeated, mystified.

"You prance," Sakura said helpfully.

"In my defense," Kakashi added. "I actively opposed five of those incidents."

Sakura rolled her eyes in Kakashi's direction and asked, "Sensei, you disappeared into the forest. We found you in a cave with two bags of chocolate and Jiraya-Sensei's newest book."

"That is active opposition. For me."

"I'm supposed to return you to the village," Sai finished, rolling right over Sakura's disbelieving snort. "So the Lady Tsunade can throw her pig at Naruto, I think."

"This is why the pig will always like me better," Naruto agreed.

"Sorry, Sai," Sakura said. "We were-unexpectedly detained."

"So I see. Collecting strays again, Naruto?"

Sasuke's shoulders snapped tight and straight.

"We've met before," Sai continued, stepping toward Sasuke. Sakura, who'd spent years observing Sasuke's tells, found this a supremely bad idea. Sasuke's eyes only fluttered so delicately right before he started burning faces off.

With that gentle, empty smile of his, Sai added, "You tried to kill me."

"He tries to kill a lot of people," Naruto said. "It's how Sasuke does the feelings-thing. We're working on it."

"I remember you," Sasuke said, voice pitched low and almost pleasant. No screaming here-not like he'd done in the cave, not for Sai. Sasuke's screams belonged to two people only, and Itachi was no longer alive to hear them. "You're my replacement."

"I suppose," Sai said.

"Not suppose," Sasuke corrected, and Sakura saw Kakashi shift his feet at the tiny, blade-sharp smile that slipped across Sasuke's face. "You're a carbon copy. A peg squeezed into the hole I left behind. Right down to the physical appearance."

"Fucking fuck, Sasuke," Naruto said, and stepped in between the two bristling ninja. "It's not his fault that we found a new Sad-Eyed Ninja to feed and water after you left. Ease off the Bastard throttle a bit, yeah?"

Sasuke fixed Naruto with the blankest of stares. Naruto, being well-versed in such looks, smiled back with all of his teeth.

"Intriguing," Sai murmured. "To see it up close."

"Eh?" Naruto asked, turning to give Sai a squinty-eyed look of confusion.

"Your bond," Sai explained. "The one you're always howling about." Tilting his head to peer over Naruto's shoulder, Sai asked Sasuke, "Do you mind if I study you for hints of homoerotic context?"

Naruto let out the shrill, strangled screech of a bubbling teapot. Out of the corner of her eye, Sakura caught sight of Kakashi's laughter in his trembling shoulders, even though he'd hastily stuffed his book in front of his face.

"Are you serious," Sasuke said, voice flat enough to completely eliminate the question mark. It was unclear who exactly he was speaking to.

"Naruto likes dicks," Sai said. "Starting with that knowledge, it's a natural enough assumption."

"NO IT IS NOT," Naruto yowled. "YOU NEED BETTER ASSUMPTIONS. YOU NEED A FLOWCHART, SAI."

Sai's brow wrinkled the barest bit and he asked, "Do you not like Sasuke's dick, then?"

Sakura leapt in then, if only because Sasuke's face was getting red, Naruto looked one testicular mention away from an aneurism, and Kakashi was too busy laughing himself sick behind the nearest tree to help.

"Sai needs help understanding relationships between people, sometimes," she explained.

"I have a book," Sai added helpfully.

"So we're going to do the intelligent thing and ignore everything he says," Sakura finished. "No more talking about Naruto's dick, Sai."

"Sasuke's dick?"

"No. Zero mentions of Naruto's dick, Sasuke's dick, and your theories as to their relationship allowed."

Sai pouted for a moment-a miniscule pursing of his lips but he was Sakura's teammate and that meant that she knew the workings of his face-and said, "No mentions at all?"

"You may talk about my dick," Sakura said graciously.

"It is the biggest one here," Sai said, visibly brightening.

"I hate everything," Naruto informed Sasuke.

Sasuke couldn't vocalize his agreement due to the massive stick up his ass, but Sakura read it anyway in the sharp tic of his eyebrow.

When they stopped for the night, Sai sent a paper bird to the Hokage, informing her of their imminent return.

"You didn't mention Sasuke," Sakura said, watching the bird vanish between the trees in a flash of bone white and black ink.

"She would pass judgment, without anyone there to plead his case." Sai glanced across the clearing they'd stopped in for the night, where Naruto was attempting to bully Sasuke into eating. Going off of the steely clench of Sasuke's jaw, Sakura figured Naruto would shortly be wearing the dinner he was trying to force down Sasuke's throat. "It would cause trouble for Naruto."

"You're a good teammate, Sai."

He gave Sakura one of those pretty glass smiles-so empty of everything but a poor reflection that it made Sakura want to scream-and said, "Not according to my training. Or the training of the Leaf Village, actually."

"We've always done things a bit differently on Team Seven," Sakura agreed with a weary sigh. "You fit right in."

Sai kept silent. Sakura glanced down, and saw some of his paper crumpled between his fists.

Across the clearing, Naruto yelled, "Bastards need to eat, too! Open up for the ninja train, Sasuke!"

"You do, you know," Sakura said, into the appalled silence that followed Naruto's shout. "Fit."

"Like a peg in a hole?" Sai asked. "A placeholder until the real piece could be found?"

"Like someone I've wanted to punch the stupidity out of," Sakura corrected. "Like someone who's almost been smothered on away missions because he snores. Like someone who is probably slowly poisoning us because he serves food with ink-stained fingers. Like a teammate, Sai."

"Ninja teams are made of four," Sai recited, his voice perfectly flat in the way it only was when Root training was involved. "Three younger ninja and a more experienced leader. Made of four, always."

"We've always done things a bit differently on Team Seven," Sakura repeated.

"Chugga-chugga-choo-choo!" Naruto yelled.

"I will stick that fork through your eye socket," Sasuke said.

"Sometimes," Sakura continued, quietly. "Standing on the outside a little doesn't have to be a bad thing. It's so _much_ in the middle, you know? Too loud, too hot. Not everyone can live there all the time. And the people that do-well. They need someone on the outside to help them when it burns too bright. Someone outside, but close enough to hear them if they need it."

"And who hears you? When you need it?"

Sakura's smile hurt a little but not as much as it had once. It was an old ache, and a familiar one by now.

"They do," she assured him. "Maybe not always, and that's something you learn to live with. But when you really need it? They hear you, always."

Sai studied the paper in his hands. His knuckles had eased off the folds of it, loosened so that the skin of his knuckles was no longer as pale as the parchment.

"And you don't resent it?" Sai asked. "Being there, on the outside."

Once, the question might have crumbled her. Might have broken her into tiny pieces of self-doubt and crippling failure. But she'd been in this circle of theirs long enough to understand her own proximity to the center. She'd spent years and sweat and effort creeping as close as she could to the burning in the middle without losing herself in the blaze of it. And once she'd found her place and built herself there she'd come to understand the importance of walls in containing a bonfire.

"It's a good place," she said. And because this was Sai, and he didn't understand things between people that weren't spelled out and offered, smiled and added, "A little lonely. Wouldn't mind some company."

"Maybe," Sai said, but he offered her a smile. A tiny one, and rusty still, but real.

"Good," Sakura said, and thought about touching his shoulder. But a loud squawk across the clearing caught her attention.

Over by the fire they'd built, Naruto was on his feet and executing some sort of flailing, stomping dance of outrage. On his head was the bowl of food he'd been attempting to choo-choo train down Sasuke's throat.

And though he appeared entirely uninterested in Naruto's dance, but the air around Sasuke was all but radiating triumph.

Sai looked at Sakura.

"Do we…help?" he asked.

"No. The fork isn't actually in Naruto's eye socket like Sasuke said. Acceptable losses, Sai."

"I see," he said, and instead tilted his head like a curious bird and turned his attention to capturing the image of Naruto, bowl on his head and gyrating ferociously while Kakashi feigned an inability to hear and Sasuke almost-smirked in the background.

The next morning, as they were flitting through the trees with Sasuke strapped securely to Kakashi's back once more, Sai turned to Sasuke and offered a pleasant smile.

"I've read that giving someone a nickname fosters familiarity and friendship between the two parties. Is Manpain acceptable to you?"

Naruto ran into a tree. Face first, ran into it, and then slid all the way down like a bug on a glass door.

"What," Sasuke said.

"No? That's all right. I'll think of something better."

The faintest trace of horror crept across Sasuke's face at the concept of 'better'. From the ground, Naruto's braying laughter came up through the branches.

"GURK. HA. HIS FACE. SAI. YOU'RE THE GREATEST."

The barest hint of Sai's smile, the real one, curved his lips.

"You did just fine," Kakashi said, low and pleased in Sakura's ear.

"I really did, didn't I?" she agreed. Sai's smile was still as fragile as the shattered mirror it had come from, and Naruto still had the jagged look of someone holding things together by sheer force of will, and every step closer to the Leaf Village made Sasuke's eyes a little darker, a little deader.

But for now, the sun was on her face and Sakura could smile.

**Author's Note:**

> It's so comforting, really, to realize that I understand what I'm doing now even less than I understood what I was doing back then. Incredible.  
> Next Up: Sasuke's POV: Opinions on the Great, Blonde Idiot.


End file.
